


'twas the night before christmas.

by romulus_adhara



Series: the rest of our lives. [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends AU, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, New York City, Side Taeten, Slow Build, Time Skips, mentioned relationships that aren't the main ship, side doyu, side jaewoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28199247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romulus_adhara/pseuds/romulus_adhara
Summary: “What are your traditions?” Irene asks suddenly, and Johnny looks up at her with a frown. “Like, if you were home right now, what would you be doing?”A smile fights its way to Johnny’s face. He leans back in his chair and looks out into the huge windows overlooking the snowy city. Tulsa is nice and not that much of an eyesore when it’s covered in snow, yet it’s nothing compared to the winter New York — not in the way that Johnny learned to love it when he met the people he now considers family.“Well,” he breathes out, “I’d love to say our Christmases are pretty tame. But god damn it if something doesn’t always happen.”
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: the rest of our lives. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065743
Comments: 31
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> YO HO HO MOTHERPORKERS! IM SO EXCITED AKJSDHAK  
> okay so! this is a part of A SERIES i've been sporadically planning and writing for the past couple months, and i didn't intend for this one to kick it off, but i just got inspired i don't CARE. this is heavily inspired by friends and how i met your mother, but much gayer. more in the end notes!
> 
> title from 'a visit from st nicholas' by clement clarke moore

_**2019**_

Mark doesn’t look disappointed. Johnny knows he is, but his husband is probably the saint sent down to save and grace his pathetic ass, because not a single muscle on his beautiful face indicates that he’s sad about Johnny having to spend Christmas at work, in another damn city.

“It’s just one time,” Mark whispers into his shoulder, curled up at Johnny’s side. “We’ll have many more Christmases to come, and every one of them we will spend together.”

“Yeah.” Johnny buries his face in Mark’s hair, eyes falling shut. “I promise.”

“You promise.” Mark kisses his shoulder. “And you always keep your promises.”

He says it lightly, with a joyful air to it, but it lands like bitter acid on Johnny’s mind. He’s made a promise to always make Mark happy for as long as they live, and yet now he’s—

Mark sits up on his elbow and kisses him firmly.

“Don’t overthink it,” he demands when they part. “We’re good, baby.”

For his benefit, and because Johnny is insanely in love with this man, he nods and gets it out of his head with a smile. Something falls in the living room, breaking them out of their little domestic fantasy, and Mark drops his head on Johnny’s chest with a tired sigh.

“I bet it’s Ten,” he murmurs. “Do you think they had another fight?”

“No, Taeyong’s on that business trip in Poughkeepsie until Christmas Eve.” Johnny hums in thought. “It’s probably Jaehyun stealing our food.”

Mark curses under his breath and sits up to throw some pajama bottoms on. “I’m going to chain him to his _own_ fridge one of these days.”

Johnny trails the line of his smooth back, multicolored in the shadow of the Christmas lights hung up around their bedroom. A little bruise under his shoulder blade from Friday when Johnny came home and was so eager to finally touch his husband he accidentally bumped him into a wall too hard; in Johnny’s defense, Mark liked it way too much. There’s the little apple blossom tattoo on his shoulder, a drunken thing Mark gave significance to post-factum simply because he was too afraid to go through the pain of removing it. The scar on his waist from the ski accident, the scariest day in Johnny’s life — and somehow one of the happiest, too, because it took seeing Mark in the ER in a full-body cast to realize Johnny was in love with him; two years before anything happened, sure, but it was a good start. And a hickey at the bottom of his neck where it meets his perky shoulder, Johnny’s favorite spot after the mole constellation on Mark’s left side.

“I love you so much,” Johnny finds himself breathing out, the power of his affection constricting his voice.

Mark looks down on him with a sideways smile, that little happy smirk of his that has turned from a shy self-conscious one into the assured, confident tilt of lips in the time of their relationship and marriage. He raises his hand and kisses his wedding ring, a little tradition, before pressing his fingers to Johnny’s cheek. Johnny turns his face and kisses the ring too.

“We’ll get through it,” Mark whispers. “I’ll go cook something for Jaehyun and then come back to help you pack, okay?”

“Okay.” Johnny sighs. “You’re the best.”

“Mm, I know.”

He leaves with that, leaving the door to the living room ajar. Johnny closes his eyes, listening to his voice scolding Jaehyun for eating the cookie dough raw as he takes it away to actually bake the little gingerbread men into existence. Jaehyun murmurs something unintelligible, and then — the door to the apartment opens to Ten falling in with another rumble about his latest exhibition. Johnny glances at the clock. Yuta and Doyoung will undoubtedly join them soon to help Mark decorate the Christmas tree — or, pretend to help as Mark gets annoyed with them and banishes them to the couch before doing it alone. The only voice missing is Taeyong, but he’ll be here soon, just in time to chug down the eggnog and probably hook up with Ten after midnight to then pretend nothing happened and stay blissfully unaware of everybody knowing exactly _what_ happened.

On Christmas, they will all gather around the journal table and exchange gifts, surrounded by the cozy dreamland of the decorations Mark so diligently put up and the smell of gingerbread cookies and peppermint schnapps. And Johnny won’t be here for it.

God. He hates it. He really fucking does, but that’s what life is, and with their grand plans for starting a family, he can’t afford _not_ to go to his sucky job and hold his sucky meetings. Johnny holds up his hand in the air and watches the Christmas lights bounce off of his own wedding ring, a white-gold band with Mark’s name engraved on the inside. This is why he’s doing it. For Mark.

Johnny swallows and gets up to start packing. The longer he wallows, the harder it will be to leave; and every time he has to walk through the door and leave Mark alone, he already feels like tearing off his own limbs.

_**2019** _

Johnny’s employees don’t look extremely ecstatic to be here on Christmas Eve, but Johnny is a little selfish in this regard and silently notes that none of them can be more miserable than him. 

The jolly music trickles in from the hall as Irene from Sales flows into the room with a bowl full of cookies. He regards it suspiciously.

“Did you bake those?” 

“Nope.” Irene falls down into her seat. “Stole it from the Marketing people down the hall.”

“I see.” Johnny sighs. “Shall we begin, then?”

A dissatisfied grim murmur comes over the room and settles in the bleak branches of the fake Christmas tree in the corner of the conference room. Johnny rubs his forehead.

“Come on, everybody, cheer up!” He tries. “We only need to finish up these quarterly reports, and then we’re free!”

His assistant Greg groans and props his elbows on the table. “My little niece is in the play right now. And I’m missing it.”

Johnny squishes down the annoyance inside of him, because yeah, a kid is in the play, sure, but his friends are in another state entertaining his husband because he can’t be there for him. Who’s the real victim here, Greg?

“Listen, I know this sucks,” he sighs, “but at least at the end of the day, you get to go home and be with your families. _I_ have to go back to an empty and suspiciously-smelling hotel room and lie down on a questionable bedspread. My Christmas Eve dinner is the chocolate they’re putting on my pillow. So.”

Another wave of groans rolls around the room. Irene smacks her lips.

“You’re such a good boss, always keeping us motivated!”

“Thanks,” Johnny says, “I’m thinking of becoming a professional negotiator. Talking people down from the ledge, assisting in hostage situations, stuff like that.”

He shuffles the papers before him and reaches for his notebook to see the order of the day that he jotted down on his flight to New York a week ago. He hasn’t touched it in days and probably should’ve brushed up on it before, but well, he had a very attractive and very touch-starved husband to attend to—

“Oh.” Johnny breathes out.

“What’s up?” Greg looks up at him.

Johnny reaches into his notebook and unstaples a little sticky note placed neatly on top of his to-do list. It’s a little pink note, a painfully familiar thing from the days Mark was just his next-door neighbor and his best friend’s little brother who left him annoying reminders about cleaning and doing his part in upkeeping the hall.

_There’s a three-course Christmas meal waiting for you at the hotel, baby. Give them hell and come back to me soon. Merry Christmas, and I love you. — Mark_

“It’s a note from my husband,” Johnny murmurs, his voice husky. “He— he sent me dinner to the hotel. Probably wasn’t easy.”

“Oh, that’s so nice,” Irene coos. “You’re so lucky to have him.”

“Yeah.” Johnny can’t stop staring at Mark’s neat, cursive handwriting. “He’s literally the best.”

Greg sighs very loudly. “My boyfriend is cool, too.”

 _No, Greg_ , Johnny wants to say, _nobody in the world is as cool as Mark fucking Lee._

What he says instead is something that, in retrospect, won’t do much good for his career.

“Go to him, then,” Johnny says, looking up. “To hell with this shit. I’ll finish the reports, you go home. All of you.”

There’s silence as they all look between him and each other, confusion and reluctant disbelief painted on their faces. Johnny shakes his head and claps his hands.

“Come on, before I change my mind!” He encourages. “It’s bad enough that we have to work New Year’s Eve.”

As people gape at him, two things occur to him — he hasn’t told them that, and worse than that, he hasn’t told _Mark_ that yet. Jesus Christ on a stick, he’s a _horrible_ freaking husband.

“Yeah, that’s happening,” he drawls. “But, Merry Christmas?”

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, they gather their things with a little less excitement than they would’ve had otherwise, but still, the room clears out in under five minutes. The only chair still occupied is Irene’s, who hasn’t moved an inch.

“What about you?”

Irene sighs and twirls her hair with her pinky.

“My wife is working, too,” she says wistfully. “She’ll only get off at eleven, so there’s no point in leaving now.”

“I see,” Johnny hums. “Is it just the two of you?”

“No,” Irene says with a wide smile. “We’re going to our friends’ place downtown. It’s a tradition.”

Johnny’s mood, already frayed and grey, dampens even more. He sighs and fumbles with Mark’s note, tracing the letters with his ring finger.

“What are your traditions?” Irene asks suddenly, and Johnny looks up at her with a frown. “Like, if you were home right now, what would you be doing?”

A smile fights its way to Johnny’s face. He leans back in his chair and looks out into the huge windows overlooking the snowy city. Tulsa is nice and not that much of an eyesore when it’s covered in snow, yet it’s nothing compared to the winter New York — not in the way that Johnny learned to love it when he met the people he now considers family.

“Well,” he breathes out, “I’d love to say our Christmases are pretty tame. But god damn it if something doesn’t always happen.”

_**2010**_

Yuta arrives at the coffee house with an air about him that makes Johnny want to reach for his fresh coffee and pour it down his eyes just so he can feel _anything_ but the overwhelming _sadness_ radiating off of the man.

“Good evening, does anybody want to hold my phone while I fall face-down in the snow a couple hundred times?” Yuta announces as he does a demo version of his proclamation and plums down into the pillow on the couch.

“What’s up, bro?” Johnny asks, honestly admitting to himself that he _doesn’t_ want to know.

Yuta turns over and sighs so loudly Ten The Bartender looks up from his place and frowns at the man. He’s a new addition to the coffee house, but they haven’t talked much yet. As Mark has reported from his professional snooping, Ten is a trust-fund baby that moved to the Village from the Upper East Side to be ‘independent’. Which, apparently, includes buying their favorite bar and turning it into a pretentious coffee house. Johnny doesn’t know a lot about Ten aside from that, but he feels they’re not becoming besties anytime soon. The one redeeming quality Ten has is always reserving the comfiest couch for Johnny and his friends, but that’s hardly enough to make Johnny look past his personality.

“Lily took my houseplants,” Yuta informs him darkly, gazing dramatically at the ceiling. “ _One_ thing I had left from the divorce, and she took it, just took it!”

Johnny glances at Mark on the opposite armchair. 

“For the last time, it wasn’t a divorce,” Mark groans. “Just because she got married and moved out doesn’t mean she abandoned you.”

Yuta gasps and glares at Mark scandalously. “She _left me alone and heartbroken!_ How’s that not a divorce?”

Mark takes a deep breath. “You’re _gay_.”

“So is Lily,” Yuta pouts. “What’s your point?”

With a snicker, Johnny reaches out to pat his knee. He would _love_ to talk to Yuta about his abandonment issues and the fact that his roommate moving out doesn’t mean he’s been left alone, but he has some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, and besides, when Yuta’s upset, it’s better to wait out the three-days half-life period before approaching it.

“At least you still have a boyfriend,” he reminds Yuta. “I gotta bounce for now, don’t cry until I’m out the door, please.”

Yuta swipes at him in annoyance but doesn’t comment. Johnny fist-bumps Mark and sets out for the door, but before he can even walk around the couch, Taeyong rushes up to him, fixing his waiter apron with a sizable chocolate stain on it.

“We have a problem,” Taeyong whispers urgently. “Come with me.”

Without even letting Johnny reply — a habit that he’s come to be familiar with in the four months of Taeyong’s existence within the group — he drags Johnny after him and behind the counter, past the befuddled Ten, and into the storage room.

“So Thomas, Yuta’s boyfriend?” He says when they’re inside. “He just came around the back and asked me to give Yuta a message.”

Johnny frowns, uneasiness creeping up into his stomach. “Why didn’t he—”

“Because he’s _leaving_ ,” Taeyong seethes. “He got that job in Paris, so he’s bouncing.”

“What the fuck?” Johnny hisses. “And he didn’t even have the guts to break up with Yuta to his face?”

Taeyong squeals in indignation, throwing his hands up. He looks so appalled and worried it’s actually really heart-warming. Johnny suddenly remembers their first meeting back in middle school, when they were both nothing but posh teenagers with silver sticks up their asses; and then their first meeting in what Johnny likes to call _the rest of their lives_ — Taeyong bursting into the coffee house in a wedding tux, hyperventilating and begging to be saved from the prenup, predecided, pre _tty_ boring life.

“What do we do?” Taeyong murmurs sadly. “He’s already a mess, how the hell am I supposed to tell him about this?”

The door to the storage room opens to reveal an unamused Ten in an absolutely _ridiculous_ reindeer sweater. 

“Ask Mark,” he decrees. “The dude is his brother, he knows how to handle it.”

“First of all,” Taeyong says grimly, holding his index finger up, “this is a private conversation. Second of all, that’s just unfair.”

“ _First of all_ ,” Ten mocks him, “it’s _my_ storage room, and you _can_ use it for your private conversations, by the way, thanks for asking. Second of all, Mark is, like, Mother Theresa. I’d trust him to tell me my father’s dead.”

Johnny can’t help but agree.

“I mean,” Ten continues, “I’d be actually _happy_ to hear about that, but it’s too early in our lifelong friendship for you to know about my daddy issues.”

Taeyong stares at him. Johnny snorts.

“Right.” He clears his throat. “So, we ask Mark?”

“Oh, I’ll get him!” Ten volunteers with a happy smirk.

He disappears back into the coffee house. Johnny looks back at Taeyong to crack a joke about the absurdness of the dude, only to find Taeyong following Ten out with a dreamy gaze. Johnny snaps his fingers before Taeyong’s face.

“ _No_.” He commands. “You are _not_ tapping that.”

“But I wanna,” Taeyong whines with a pout.

“He’s annoying!”

“He’s _cute_.”

“You work for him.”

“ _Sexy_.”

Johnny slaps him on the shoulder just when Ten drags Mark into the already crowded room and shuts the door behind him. Taeyong moves to the side under the pretense of freeing up some space, but Johnny doesn’t miss how he presses himself to Ten’s side. There’s a precariously laid-out stack of paper cups right above him, and Johnny wagers a good push would send them flying right on Taeyong’s head — a good equivalent of an ice bucket under these circumstances. 

While Johnny plots that, Taeyong relays what happened to a mildly spooked Mark.

“Jesus,” he breathes out at the end. “That’s horrible. We have to tell him right now, but like… It’s _Christmas Eve_ tomorrow. He hates being alone on holidays.”

“He’ll be with us, though,” Taeyong tries. “So that’s a good tradition to keep him grounded.”

“Well,” Johnny murmurs, scrunching up his nose. “He also has another Christmas tradition, but _I’m_ not sucking his dick to fulfill it.”

“ _Ew_ , dude, that’s my _brother,_ ” Mark whines.

“I can do it,” Ten volunteers cheerily.

Taeyong coughs into his palm and bumps the shelf behind him with his back. The stack of cups Johnny was eyeing falls right on Ten’s head while Taeyong smiles innocently. Johnny can’t help but admire the evil mind of the dude.

“Nobody is sucking Yuta’s dick,” Mark insists when Ten’s out of the paper-cup-danger zone. “We’ll just be with him at all times so he doesn’t feel lonely.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Johnny says dubiously.

“You have a better one?” Mark growls, staring him down.

Johnny still doesn’t know — and for several years to come, _won’t_ know — _how_ the hell Mark manages to be so intimidating sometimes, but it’s crazy effective. So he gulps and shakes his head. Mark nods in satisfaction.

“Good.” He smiles. “I’ll handle the conversation, you handle the aftermath.”

“We're still on for the dinner at our apartment tomorrow?” Taeyong confirms.

“Yep, five o’clock,” Mark replies.

“Nice,” Ten butts in. “I’ll bring peppermint schnapps.”

“We don’t drink it,” Johnny says before realizing he should’ve addressed the _other_ thing.

“Good time to start,” Ten informs him before ducking out of the storage room.

Mark tilts his head in confusion. “Does he know he wasn’t invited?”

Johnny sighs heavily and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know, but something tells him we’re not getting rid of him.”

A second of contemplation passes before Mark shrugs. “Eh, it’s just one party. I doubt he’ll be sticking around.”

“Yea-ah,” Taeyong sighs.

“No,” Johnny says firmly.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Taeyong repeats before winking at Johnny and escaping the room.

When Mark and Johnny come out too and head for the couch to battle the inevitability of a hard conversation with Yuta, there appears to be a delay in the face of one Kim Doyoung, a man Johnny’s never expected to see in the Village this time of year. Or ever, to be frank. A few surprised greetings later, they find out that Doyoung quit his job back in Korea to finally settle down in New York and head his father’s law firm from the comfort of his boss seat and not through remote-controlled management.

“So yeah, I’m moving in across the street next week,” Doyoung says after his second cup of coffee.

Yuta’s face can be only described as absolutely _smitten_ , and it’s only when Johnny sees it does he remember the exact magnitudes of the mess he witnessed through his lifelong friendship with Doyoung and Yuta. Everybody thought they would end up together, but Doyoung left for Yale and Yuta joined Johnny in Harvard, and from that point, it kinda fell apart. A lot of things happened that Yuta still sometimes mumbles about when he's drunk, but as far as everybody's concerned -- Doyoung and Yuta are a closed chapter.

“Your dad told me you lived here in the Village,” Doyoung says with a self-conscious smile. “I know I should’ve talked to you _before_ I signed a lease, but I just… I don’t know, wanted some familiar faces nearby, I guess.”

“Oh, that’s amazing,” Yuta breathes out. “I live a few blocks down, and Johnny and Mark are actually upstairs.”

“Really?” Doyoung’s eyebrows fly up.

“Yup,” Johnny smacks his lips. “You’ll get to know my roommate Jaehyun soon enough. He moved in last year but he’s the coolest dude you’ll ever meet.”

“Yeah, and I live with Taeyong,” Mark perks up, pointing at Taeyong on the other end of the coffee house. “Remember him?”

Doyoung follows Mark’s hand and locates Yong with a frown. “Are you meaning to tell me that’s our prom king in an apron?”

Yuta snorts and slaps him on the shoulder. “You have a lot to catch up on.”

Doyoung meets his eyes and smiles, and in that little familiar smirk, Johnny sees a little into the future and thinks that perhaps, that chapter was only shut for a little while. As he looks at Mark and sees his evil scheming face on, he reckons Mark is thinking the same thing.

Christmas lights twinkle merrily all around them, and as Ten drops on the couch next to them and introduces himself to Doyoung, Johnny thinks — perhaps now, _this_ is the start of the rest of their lives.

_**2011**_

Johnny would honestly, _truly_ , be okay if there was only _one_ couple within the group. He can deal with a certain level of lovey-dovey mushy stuff while his own ass is pathetically single, but to have not one but _two_ couples hanging around and raining on his parade with heart-shaped confetti? That’s simply horrible, honestly.

Nobody else really agrees with him in his grumpiness, but then again — all these fake bitches actually have dates for their Christmas party, whilst Johnny is proudly and sadly single. Doyoung and Yuta have just gotten together, _finally,_ after a year of relentless pining and bad timing. Ten and Taeyong are still in their honeymoon phase, or, as Mark expertly puts it, their _horny-_ moon phase, which shouldn’t be possible after almost seven months of dating but is still very much real. Jaehyun is dating yet _another_ extra from his show, and while Johnny knows he won’t be seeing the guy after Christmas, it still kinda _sucks_. 

And Mark, the biggest traitor of them all, Mark, who _promised_ they’d both be single on New Year’s, went ahead and got himself a model boyfriend two days before Christmas, not even bothering to hide it from the rest of the group until after the holidays.

“You’ll love Daniel, I promise,” Mark whines, for the umpteenth time. “He’s very funny, and he’s a playwright! You’ll have a lot to talk about.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Johnny groans from his place on the couch, where he’s been sulking instead of helping Mark with cooking for the past two hours. “He sounds _lovely_.”

Mark sighs so _quietly_ Johnny feels like shit because that was obviously not meant to be heard by him. With a bitter and horribly slimy feeling in his stomach, he gets up and hooks his chin over the couch to see Mark in the kitchen busying himself with the stuffing.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sure he’s amazing, and I’m really happy for you.”

“I know,” Mark sighs. He wipes his hands on a towel and comes into the living room, crouching down. “And I know you’re just sad you’re single right now. But dude, _look at you._ ”

Johnny frowns and looks down on the baggy old clothes he’s supposed to change out of for the party unless he wants Mark to kick him out. He sniffs and realizes he also needs to take a good long shower.

“I’m repulsive?” He tries.

“You’re _gorgeous_ ,” Mark replies. “Even in three-day-old clothes with what I can only hope are _mayo_ stains on them.”

“They are,” Johnny assures him, but then smirks. “At least the ones on the shirt.”

“Yikes.” Mark flinches in that cute way of his that Johnny remembers from their childhood. “You’re disgusting, but you’re still attractive. You’ll find someone soon enough.”

“ _When?_ ” Johnny whines. “Everybody’s paired up, and here I am, the _loner_ , the _outcast_ , the—”

Mark groans loudly and grabs his face to push him back onto the couch.

“I take it back, you’re annoying, and you’re going to stay single forever,” he decrees. “Now get your stinky ass off of my couch and go change into something presentable.”

Johnny contemplates just staying here forever, but then he remembers the last time he camped out on Mark’s couch — the week of The Bet — and realizes that there are only so many nervous breakdowns he can cause Mark before the guilt kicks in. With a heavy sigh, he gets up and paddles toward the door to maybe take a nap back at his own place before showing up for the party.

Before he leaves, however, he steals a cup of Mark’s hand-made peppermint schnapps — Ten was right in the end, they _did_ develop an obsession with it — and gulps it down accompanied by Mark’s indignant squeak.

“Delicious,” he sighs when he’s done. “You’re the best.”

With a quick and deliberately wet smooch on Mark’s cheek, he runs off, thinking that maybe, this Christmas won’t suck that much. He may not have a boyfriend, but he has his friends, and more importantly — he has _Mark_.

_**2019**_

“Jesus, you sound whipped already,” Irene comments with a smile. “Let me guess, you fell for him shortly after?”

Johnny hums and rubs his lips in thought. The party down the hall is louder now that the conference room is empty.

“No, actually,” he recalls. “For the longest time, I would laugh at anyone who would even insinuate I had any kind of romantic feelings for him.”

“Oh,” Irene hums. “Well, when _did_ it happen?”

With an intriguing smirk, Johnny gets up from his place and stretches his neck. As the lights twinkle in the assortment of red-blue-green-golden and the Tulsa sky grows greyer behind the window as the clock ticks away to midday, he pours some water into the electric kettle and sets it to boil. He turns around and props himself on the counter, hands in his pockets as he sighs dreamily.

“We’ll get to that,” he promises. “But to understand how _we_ happened, you have to know a little bit more.”

Irene glances at the clock and shrugs nonchalantly. “We have cookies, we have time. Do tell.”

“Oh well.” Johnny clears his throat, recalling the events that transpired years ago but still have an impact on all of their lives. “The Christmas of 2012 arrived to see a break-up and a marriage proposal within the group...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO HO HO MOTHERPORKERS /2/
> 
> so. SO. this is a five-part fic, with each chapter dropping every day leading up to christmas. as i said, this is heavily inspired by friends and how i met your mother, but much, MUCH gayer, and with a lot of deviations from the plot and characters. some tropes are downright stolen but reimagined, and some would say that's not very original...but do i care? NOPE BYE ~  
> ahhh im so freaking excited please i hope you love it just as much as I do!
> 
> [approvied and kinda beta-ed by zen and irene (who also dragged me into the himym btw), mwah]
> 
> [DO COME YELL AT ME ON twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	2. Chapter 2

_**2012** _

It’s tense. It’s tense in a way it hasn’t been in a long time, but they still have to work with it because after so much time, it’s impossible to imagine spending Christmas — or any holiday, for that matter — without either Ten or Taeyong. Their lives are too intertwined now, too entangled in each other’s details, and nobody in the group could imagine even _thinking_ of asking one of them to stay away.

Johnny thinks — we’ll get through it. Mark is making the food, which always puts people in the good mood, and both Ten and Taeyong promised to behave and not fight for once, which is dubious but still forces them all to have faith in it. Jaehyun promises to get some good weed to relax everybody, and while Johnny hasn't gotten high since college, he’s willing to make an exception if only to brave through what promises to be the most awkward Christmas yet.

But then, a week before their dinner, Kim Doyoung reminds everybody that he always knows what he wants and never delays going for it and proposes to Yuta. It’s a romantic occasion, and they all listen to the story with happy smiles and supportive laughs, and honestly, Johnny is _super_ psyched for them, but there is a persistent issue. 

You see, the happiness about your two best friends getting engaged can dampen just a little when it arrives to the wake of your other best friends ending their relationship in a way that is as explosive and mesmerizing as the relationship itself always was.

Johnny arrives at Mark's several hours before dinner to fulfill their own little tradition — Johnny offering to help and Mark refusing it but still needing Johnny in the room to bitch at him for not helping. He slumps over the couch as he watches Mark stir the potatoes.

“This is gonna be a weird Christmas, isn’t it?” He mumbles with a tragic sigh.

Mark stirs faster. “No, it’s going to be an _amazing_ Christmas.”

“Because… you’ll curse it to be so?” Johnny tries.

With a heavy sigh, Mark drops the masher and sits down tiredly in the chair. He looks tired, Johnny notes for the first time in a few weeks. Now that he thinks about it, Mark hasn’t been quite himself since Taeyong and Ten broke up.

“I’ll just make a nice dinner,” Mark mumbles, “and we’ll celebrate the engagement, and the exes will be civil, and Jaehyun _won’t_ drag another fruit fly of a boyfriend into our holiday and ruin our group picture.”

“You’re not name-dropping _me_?” Johnny wonders with a smirk. “That’s nice.”

Mark looks up at him with a spent smile. “You haven’t made my life miserable yet, so.”

“So.” Johnny clears his throat.

They sit in silence for a while, only the quiet Christmas music flowing in from Mark’s iPod hooked up to the speakers and the wonderful aroma of their future dinner filling up the apartment. Johnny suddenly thinks about the first time he arrived here. Mark got this apartment from his grandma, becoming the youngest struggling chef with his own three-room in Manhattan, and all of them gathered for a housewarming. Johnny remembers remarking on the purple walls, to which Mark flinched and vowed to repaint them — in vain, as it turns out, because the gentle lilac yet graces the surroundings. It was a happy coincidence that the apartment opposite of Mark’s was up for rent, and without thinking twice, Johnny applied for it. Within a week, they were neighbors.

“Hey,” Johnny calls out softly.

Mark looks up at him as he rubs his left eye. “Yeah?”

“You’re doing amazing,” Johnny says. “I’m proud of you. So much.”

A mysterious twinkle in Mark’s eye resonates with the array of bright lights strung up around the kitchen and the living room. Something passes between them, a strange look that appears on Mark’s face as he takes his time to answer. It tangles with his crooked smile and makes Johnny feel wondrously warm. At home.

“Thanks, Johnny,” Mark whispers. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

Jaehyun throws the door open then, interrupting any possible conversation that can follow. Johnny takes in his appearance, a sweater he definitely stole from Ten and goddamn _jorts_ , and rolls his eyes. He goes to ask if Jaehyun’s already high when the man in questions flails his arms around with a panicked face.

“They fought _again_ ,” he seethes. “And they’re right behind me.”

Mark’s face falls for a second before closing up completely as he stands up to keep on cooking. With something akin to murderous rage, Johnny shoots up from the couch and storms out into the corridor. He hears the bitches when he flies out into the staircase and bends over the railing to see them arguing two floors down. 

Johnny curses under his breath as he runs down the steps, but before he can reach his destination, the voices die out suddenly. Johnny freezes in his place and glances down to witness a scene that is eerily familiar but extremely out of place in this timeline.

Ten is pressing Taeyong to the wall, their lips locked in what looks like a painful kiss — but the one both of them are, nevertheless, clearly enjoying. Johnny gulps, not sure how to proceed.

When they broke up, Ten came to Johnny with one and only favor to ask — to not let him get caught into the post-breakup nostalgia, because he knew even then that he _would_ miss Taeyong and he _would_ deliberately forget why they broke up if he saw a chance to be with him again. Johnny promised to keep him away, yet there they are — Johnny frozen on the stairwell and Ten marching right back into the disaster that is their relationship with Taeyong.

But, before he can shake himself off and go prevent what would definitely be a bad idea, Taeyong does it for him.

He pushes Ten away with an audible whine and shakes his head.

“No,” he breathes out desperately. “We promised we wouldn’t do that.”

Ten clicks his tongue. “I know, but—”

“No, Ten, I’m serious,” Taeyong insists, his face so broken it hurts _Johnny_. “We already got the post-breakup sex, we already made so many excuses to hook up, this has to _stop_. Once and for all.”

There’s silence as Ten watches Taeyong’s face. Johnny can’t see the expression on him from the angle that only provides a view of the top of Ten’s bleached head, but he knows the man well enough to imagine it. Stubbornness fighting with common sense. The latter doesn’t often win.

“You’re right,” Ten whispers, surprising Johnny. “Fucking it out doesn’t help.”

Taeyong nods. “Exactly. Neither does fighting. I promised Mark to behave.”

“Me too.” Ten laughs sadly. “Gods, we’re just a fucking disaster, aren’t we?”

“Kinda.” Taeyong purses his lips in a sorrowful smile. “But for what it’s worth… I _do_ want to stay friends.”

“Same. I can’t really imagine my life without you.” Ten sniffs and looks down on the floor.

Taeyong reaches out to touch his shoulder but stops at the last minute, curling his fingers into a fist and retracting his hand. He clears his throat.

“I need some time away from you,” he confesses. “I’ll go visit my parents for New Year’s. Will you be here when I come back?”

Ten looks up at him at the implication — a rightful one, too. No matter how much it saddens all of them every time, Ten has the tendency to disappear when things get strange for him, whatever it means at the time. Nobody knows where he goes, but they know that he always comes back with just another layer of sarcastic cheerfulness added to his already thick jester facade.

“I will,” Ten promises quietly. “For now, though, let’s go pretend to be okay. For Mark.”

Taeyong smiles kindly. “For Mark.”

Johnny quietly runs back up and into the apartment before he can be discovered, turning the conversation in his mind. Mark looks up at him hopefully.

“They’ll be fine,” Johnny promises — and means it.

Not right away, not completely, but they will be. For Mark, for themselves, for the rest of the group, and for that one sturdy thing that connects them all and that Ten mentioned in passing — they just can’t imagine their lives without each other.

_**2019** _

“Damn,” Irene drawls, “those two sound like a mess.”

“You have _no_ idea,” Johnny says hardly. “But that’s a whole other story.”

Irene stretches her back and sighs before taking a sip of her tea. It steams above the cup and tickles Johnny’s nose with citrus vapors. He trails his own mug with his fingertips, watching the lights bounce off of his ring. Mark put that ring on him last year, his own fingers trembling as he struggled to get Johnny’s through the band. Everybody laughed fondly, Johnny recalls. It was a good day. Their wedding day. Johnny feels like crying.

“Later I found out Mark was struggling with his feelings for me at the time,” he recalls quietly. “He had a crush on me in high school, and it went away, but that year, something happened that… made him rethink it, but that’s another story too. It went away again, as he told me, when he met—” He curls his lips and grinds his teeth. “ _Jongin_.”

“ _Oh-h_ ,” Irene gasps in interest, sitting down and clapping her hands. “I sense _that’s_ where it gets interesting.”

Johnny straightens his shoulders and takes a deep breath.

“ _Jongin_ ,” he starts grimly, “was this ophthalmologist Mark met when his mother recommended him as the caterer. _Jongin_ was throwing a housewarming party because he had moved after his divorce. _Jongin_ was twenty years older than all of us, and he was simply perfect — educated, becoming, intelligent, funny—”

_**2013** _

“—and _so hot_ ,” Mark groans, dropping his head on the table.

Johnny snickers at him and snatches the Vail travel itinerary from under his forehead.

“You tap that yet?” He asks, faking interest in the meticulously planned week of activities Mark prepared for them before their group ski trip.

Mark only squeaks, which is enough of an answer. Johnny pats his head in sympathy.

“The retreat is romantic,” he theorizes. “I’m sure it’ll happen then, dude.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind Jongin tagging along?” Mark asks for the tenth time this week alone, looking up at Johnny with puppy eyes.

“Of course not,” Johnny snorts. “He’s your boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but it’s kind of a _friend_ thing,” Mark reasons. “I mean, minus the engaged ones, but considering they haven’t seen each other in seven months, we won’t be seeing a lot of them.”

“By the way, thanks again for getting them a room on another floor,” Johnny remembers. “You’re a saint.”

Mark makes his polite cat face and sighs. “It’s the least I could do.”

Johnny squints at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Mark squeals as he shoots up from the table and goes to do the dishes — his go-to coping mechanism when he gets even a little bit stressed. Which is often. Johnny worries about him.

Only the sounds of running water interrupts the silence that settles over them. Johnny chews on his tongue, deciding if he wants to call Mark out or it’s better to let it be since the man already has enough on his plate.

Because you see, it’s obvious why Mark said that — and why everybody’s been walking on tiptoes around Johnny ever since Richard dumped him for an actor he was apparently banging not just on-stage but also way off of it. It hurt, but what hurts more is realizing that he can’t even talk about it with anyone but Ten, because the rest of them get that pitiful look in their eyes that makes Johnny feel even worse for being a cuckolding idiot who trusted the wrong dude.

Ten, ah, the blessing in disguise that he is, is the only one who treats Johnny exactly the way he wants to be treated — with booze and crude jokes about his ex. It’s been lovely to have Ten around. Johnny doesn’t think he’d bounce back as quickly if it wasn’t for that twink of a person.

Johnny looks up at Mark’s tense back — and feels bad. Mark’s the mother of the group, essentially, constantly worrying and trying to accommodate everyone, and calling him out on it would be the shitties move since that time Yuta accidentally invited Mark’s ex to his birthday party last year. Kicking him out was pleasant, but seeing Mark go pale and shaky decidedly was not. 

“Thanks,” Johnny says after all. “For organizing the trip. You’re the best.”

Mark turns his head just a fraction to look at him. “I’m really not. But you’re welcome.”

Jaehyun bursts in then with his travel bags all packed, which only reminds Johnny he needs to do his own packing. He leaves the two of them to their business, which is apparently discussing how many tourists Jaehyun can bang before they have to leave — Johnny notes to himself that Ten will _definitely_ take Jaehyun up on that bet — and trails into his own, empty apartment. 

As Johnny packs up his warmest underwear, he realizes he can’t shake Mark from his mind. The tense line of his back, the little mole on his neck as he turned to brush Johnny’s gratitude off, the sad glint of his eyes in the Christmas lights — something about it keeps bugging him. 

  


A week later, as Johnny watches Mark climb into the chairlift to go up the mountain, the sun hits his red, happy, puffed face _just_ right — and all of a sudden, Johnny realizes something so incredibly fundamental and life-changing it stops him in his tracks. Taeyong bumps into him from behind and squeaks as he almost falls over on his ass, but Ten catches him by the waist just in time.

“You good?”

“I am,” Taeyong huffs grumpily. “But Johnny’s cosplaying a pine tree.”

Ten blinks in confusion and looks at Johnny, trailing his face with a frown. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, dude. You okay?”

Johnny opens his mouth to respond but finds that the words elude him. He looks up at the chairlift, where Mark is already far away but yet recognizable. He’s smiling up at Jongin next to him and bumping his ski sticks together with a merry smile, and Johnny’s heart skips a beat with every click of the sticks. With each passing second, Mark gets farther and farther away, and Johnny’s heart fills with unknown dread.

“Yeah, I’m—” He breathes out a cloud of steam. “I’m good.”

It’s hard to understand what the feeling inside of him is, but it tugs at his insides like a jump rope stretching in and out. Standing here surrounded by echoes of the latest pop hits reverberating through the resort and hundreds of cheerful faces zooming past him, Johnny feels suspended in the air, hung off of a zipline without any support, weightless and waiting for the fall.

Two hours later, as they rush into the hospital after the ambulance that took Mark, and Johnny sees his beaten unconscious form drown in the hospital sheets under the sick light, Johnny gets it — and he finally falls.

/

When the doctor finally comes out and tells them they can come in, Johnny can’t move. He’s stapled to the crappy plastic seat in the hall, shitty cold coffee clutched in one hand and Mark’s scarf in another, and he can’t get up. Yuta rushes in first with Doyung, Taeyong, and Jaehyun on his heels, but Ten hangs back to check up on Johnny.

Johnny hasn’t said a word since they sat down here, as opposed to Ten chattering nervously away until Taeyong sat down next to him and grabbed his hand, but somehow, he feels as if his face is crystal clear and betrays his true thoughts. The overwhelming panic, fear, absolute _terror_ as his mind replayed the image of seeing Mark’s ski break in half and send him flying down the slope, and the drop of his heart in the millisecond that Mark lay soundlessly on the ground before the screams broke out.

“Johnny?” Ten calls out, hand suspended over his shoulder.

“Yeah?” He blinks and clears his throat from the grogginess. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

There’s a moment of hesitation as Ten debates whether to press on, but eventually he just nods to himself and sneaks into the hospital room. Johnny straightens up and rubs his thighs, getting some blood into them after hours of idling as he gets up slowly, sending deliberate commands to his brain to move every inch.

Jongin enters the hall from his bathroom run just as Johnny tries to make himself open the door.

“Where’s everybody?” He asks urgently, noting the absence of others.

“Mark’s awake,” Johnny tells him quietly. “They’re inside.”

“ _Oh_!” Jongin exclaims as he rushes toward the room.

Johnny holds out his hand and stops him. “Wait.”

“What?” Jongin frows, a little annoyed crease appearing on his forehead.

With a deep breath, Johnny meets his eyes. They’re almost the same height, with Johnny having just a _little_ advantage, but he doesn’t care — even if Jongin was towering over him, he wouldn’t back down.

“You checked his skis,” Johnny says quietly enough so that it isn’t heard from the room. “Before you went up, you checked all his equipment after the guy who gave it to him.”

He doesn’t really throw any accusations, but Jongin still gets it. He squares his jaw as he levels Johnny with a stern look.

“Yeah, and?” He asks. “Everything was in perfect condition.”

“How did it break, then?” Johnny whispers. 

Jongin doesn’t respond. A part of Johnny, the humane and compassionate one, feels that it can’t be easy for the man to know he somehow missed a flaw that almost proved fatal for the man he loves, but another part, the cruel one, the one riding on the high of Johnny’s realization — wants to stuff Jongin’s face into his mistake and pound on it a little.

With an annoyed huff, Jongin pushes Johnny away and goes into the hospital room. Johnny follows suit quietly, staying by the door when he takes in the scene — Mark’s body barely visible from the crowd surrounding him but clearly clad in a full-body cast. God. Johnny flexes his fists to keep them from shaking.

Jongin leans over Mark, completely covering him from view, and Johnny feels another hot surge of anger flame up inside. And yet, he stays put.

“Where’s Johnny?”

His heart drops at the voice. Small, vulnerable, drugged voice that slurs the consonants and whines in a way that makes Johnny ache. He clears his throat and orders himself to grow some balls.

“I’m here, Markles,” he calls out, stepping closer.

The others part to let him through, and _fuck_. He can’t breathe.

Mark looks downright horrible. Aside from the fact his whole body is immobilized, his face is covered in bruises and hemorrhages. Johnny finds himself approaching the bed even if his mind wants to cower and hide if only to not see his Mark this battered up and broken.

“Jesus, dude,” he breathes out when he’s right next to Mark. “You don’t look so good.”

With a painfully-looking chuckle, Mark smacks his lips. “You think I can still score like this?”

Johnny can’t help the laugh that breaks out. “Ah, you’re still cute as a button, you’ll conquer all the yearning hearts.”

“Ah, dude, you flirting,” Mark slurs.

Johnny notes a sizable bag of morphine tapped into Mark and wonders if Mark will even remember this when he wakes up. Doesn’t matter. He crouches over the bed and brushes the hair from Mark’s drooping eyes.

“You scared us,” he whispers. “I think Doyoung is going to sue the entirety of Vail.”

“You damn right I am,” Doyoung grumbles from behind him. Johnny turns to see him furiously tapping on his phone.

“Atta boy,” Yuta commends grimly.

Mark clicks his tongue with a whine. “ _No-o_ , please, they don’t deserve it.”

“ _Mark_ ,” Taeyong gasps. “You almost _died_. You better believe this capitalistic damn corporation will pay for it.”

“But they’ll just fire that guy who checked out my equipment,” Mark whines, finding Johnny’s face with his eyes. “Johnny, please, someone can lose their job.”

Jesus fucking Christ on a stick, this is _so Mark_. Suddenly, Johnny is happy he’s not the one hooked to a heart monitor, because his pulse is going off as he looks at his _idiot_ , a man who barely escaped death but is still worried about some faceless person up at the mountain. Jongin leans in to murmur something into Mark’s ear, but he’s not looking away from Johnny, his pleading watery eyes _begging_ Johnny to do something — as if it’s _Johnny_ who is supposed to cater to his every wish.

He sighs. He may not be supposed to, but he knows damn well he still will.

“I’ll make sure that the guy is okay,” he promises lamely.

Mark’s face lights up to a degree it’s still able to, and he nods in content. He turns his head to Jongin and bumps his cheek with his nose. Johnny takes it as his dismissal. It hurts to walk away from Mark, hurts much more than it was to approach him, but he has to. So he packs up the newfound _longing_ that has him tied to Mark’s side and steps away to let Yuta through.

Instead, Johnny takes a place in the corner on yet another crappy plastic chair, and resolves to being just a silent observer. Ten watches him from another end of the room next to Jaehyun, a mysterious glint to his look that Johnny doesn’t like — mostly because whatever Ten has figured out in the last two hours isn’t something that Johnny himself is yet willing to accept.

It’s quiet in the room when Mark wakes up. Johnny knows he’s about to open his eyes when he hears his pulse speed up and contemplates reaching for the nurse button. Mark must hurt all over, and perhaps, he can benefit from some more drugs. 

There’s only him, Jongin, and Yuta in the room, but the latter two are asleep, curled up together on the couch. The others have gone back to the hotel to rest and come back in the morning for their shift, but Johnny refused to move even an inch — and he didn’t care how much Jongin and Ten glared at him.

“Jo—” Mark groans as he wakes up slowly.

Johnny glances at Jongin sound asleep and feels such a _petty_ reluctance to wake him up before he tells it to shut up. Mark wants his boyfriend, Mark will get his boyfriend.

“Johnny?” 

He blinks.

“Yeah?”

Mark opens his eyes slowly, with painful difficulty, and focuses them on Johnny after a few unsuccessful attempts. He sighs wistfully.

“You’re here.”

“Course I am, Markles,” Johnny murmurs. “Where else would I be?”

“I dreamed you left me,” Mark whines suddenly. “I was so fucking sad, so sad.”

“Oh, baby,” Johnny whispers.

He drags his chair even closer to the bed and props his elbows on it as he carefully puts his palm on Mark’s, positioned awkwardly on his chest in a stuffy cast.

“I’m here,” he promises. “Always here.”

Mark smiles, his lips stretching a little by little in a lovely, almost childish, happy little grin. He sighs contently.

“Good.” He pouts. “I forbid you to ever leave me.”

“As you wish,” Johnny says seriously, his lungs filling up with bubbles of laughter begging to be let out.

With a huff, Mark closes his eyes again, and Johnny thinks he’s about to pass out again before Mark jerks and opens his eyes wide.

“What time is it?” He asks urgently.

“Uhm.” Johnny shakes his wrist to free his watch from the sleeve. “Oh, it’s actually two minutes past midnight.”

“ _Oh_.” Mark breathes out and looks at him. “Merry Christmas, Johnny.”

A warm fuzzy feeling fills Johnny’s stomach as he sits back and realizes that yes, it’s Christmas. A rather sucky one, at that, but if he tries to infect himself with the cheery holiday spirit, he might be able to see the good things in today. Mark’s beaten up but _alive_ , and he looks rather happy for someone who can’t even scratch their own nose.

“Merry Christmas, Mark,” Johnny whispers.

The rest of the world fades away when their eyes meet. It’s just them, nothing _but_ , a little pocket of space just for the two of them — and Johnny’s happier than he’s ever been. Mark looks at him like he’s the only person in his world, and it’s so _nice_ to be looked at like that, and Johnny wonders at the past, at every time when it was just the two of them — and he tries to understand how he could be so fucking blind.

He loves Mark. In ways that he cannot explain or allow, not when Mark sees him as nothing but his old best friend, and not when there’s a man who has Mark’s heart sleeping a few feet away from them; but he loves him. Johnny loves Mark.

And now, he has to learn to live with it.

_**2019** _

“Oh god,” Irene whines. “Like, dude, I _know_ you’re married now, so everything must have worked out, but damn if that doesn’t make my heart feel shit.”

Johnny rubs his nose a little shyly. “Yeah, it was… Fuck, it was hard.”

“When did you confess to him?” Irene wonders, tilting her head.

The cookies are half-gone and their cups are on their third round of tea, and the quarterly reports are lying abandoned on the corner of the table — but Johnny cares less and less with each passing second.

“I didn’t,” Johnny confesses with a snort. “Not really.”

Irene clicks her nails on the table. “I’m sensing another amazing story.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” he hums, trying to add an air of intrigue to his voice. “But to get to that, we have something else to cover.”

“Right.” Irene clears her throat. “What happened to the Jongin dude?”

“Oh, they broke up a few months after the ski trip,” Johnny recalls. “The age thing didn’t seem like an issue at first when they were madly in love, but the longer they stayed together, the more it became clear that they wanted different things. Mark wanted kids and marriage, Jongin had already _done_ that. So, they broke up.”

“Good for you.”

“It was.” Johnny sighs. “But also wasn’t. Mark was a mess. It took him months to recover, and _then_ he ran into Jongin again, and they hooked up again, which just led to the whole thing repeating itself.”

“Damn, I want to meet your Mark,” Irene chuckles. “He sounds like an alluring fella.”

“Oh, he _is_ ,” Johnny says reverently. “The sexiest man alive. I get Jongin, honestly, I’d have trouble staying away too. He’s married now, by the way, to this dude from Ten’s old crowd, Taemin. Ten introduced them because he wanted Jongin to get off Mark’s case, and well, nobody anticipated they’d fit together so well they’d get hitched.”

“Wow, Ten sounds like both a very successful _and_ sucky matchmaker,” Irene points out.

Johnny snorts with unabashed glee. “Oh, you have _no fucking idea_.”

He refills his tea and smacks his lips.

“By the Christmas of 2014, a new person joined us for dinner,” he recalls. “Ironically enough, it was also Ten who introduced him to the group, and more specifically, to Taeyong.”

“Aren’t they exes?” Irene frowns.

“They were, yeah,” Johnny chuckles. “Taeyong was going through a rough patch at his new job, so Ten decided to hook him up with a dude he _knew_ would be okay with just hitting and quitting. Little did Ten know, Baekhyun got so whipped for Taeyong so quickly, it _really_ escalated…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh thank you all for the support for this little thing!!! this one is a little angsty but everything works out in the end <3
> 
> ps. jongin i love you so sorry for this you'll be redeemed later (yes taemin/jongin part is also in the series. what are you gonna do about it)
> 
> [DO COME YELL AT ME ON twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	3. Chapter 3

_**2014** _

Johnny loves his friends and is constantly proud of all of their achievements, however small or big, but he knows that none of them will ever get into history books — and they don’t want to. But what _will_ go down in history, he reckons, is the fact that Ten can _pout_ like nobody else in the world.

“I just don’t see why he has to bring him to Christmas,” he whines from Johnny’s living room floor.

With a sigh, Johnny turns his chair at the kitchen counter to face him.

“He’s Taeyong’s _boyfriend_ ,” Johnny points out. “And they seem to be getting pretty serious. Even Mark doesn’t mind, and you know how uptight he is about the group pictures.”

Ten sulks even more, covering his face with his forearms. “He’s been around for like, two weeks.”

Johnny purses his lips. “You were around for two _hours_ when you invited yourself to our dinner.”

“Yeah, but I was destined to be your bestie,” Ten waves him off. “It was meant to be.”

“Who’s to say Baekhyun isn’t?”

All the response he’s met with is a sardonic sigh. Johnny rolls his eyes and gets back to his cereal. Behind him, there’s suspicious silence for a while that has him wondering if Ten passed out from sorrow, but he’s not that inclined to check. It’s been years since Ten and Taeyong broke up, Ten _introduced_ Baekhyun to him, and he has _no_ business moping about them actually hitting it off. He’s a whining mess right now, sure, but he’ll bounce back quick — and when Ten _really_ wants to talk about something, he comes to Johnny alone and serious. He doesn’t crush onto his living room floor with a loud rant about his woes and miseries, like he’s doing now.

The door opens to reveal a stressed and huffed-looking Mark — Johnny’s heart diligently skips a bit. Mark glares at him and storms up to the counter, dropping a brown bag right before Johnny’s nose.

“Please tell me,” he starts in that suspiciously calm voice of his. “Why did I just get a bagel delivery that I most certainly did not order?”

“Oh!” Johnny exclaims happily, digging into the bag. “My favorite bagel place blacklisted me, so I ordered to your address.”

Mark opens his mouth in confusion, a question clear on his face, but then decides against it.

“Whatever, you’ll tell me later,” he murmurs. “I’m about to start cooking, you coming?”

Johnny’s hand stills with a fresh and heavenly-smelling bagel in it as he looks down on his cereal bowl. He’s been dreading this question, and he ran himself into the ground trying to come up with a solution that won’t have him stuck with Mark in an empty apartment for several hours while Mark’s _cooking_. Over the past year, Johnny’s perfected the system of almost never staying alone with Mark. Someone was always there with them, and if Mark noticed that it was due to Johnny’s planning skills and not pure coincidence, he never let it show. From time to time, there were situations where Johnny simply couldn’t avoid vis-a-vis meetings with Mark, but he managed fairly well to keep up with their usual banter and not, you know, give out the fact that Johnny was stupidly, madly, head-over-heels _in love_ with the guy.

But now, he can’t avoid it, and he can’t escape it, and he doesn’t even want to imagine how hard it will be to not slip up, because Mark looks absolutely gorgeous when he’s cooking, even better than usual, and Johnny’s heart can only take so many mini-aneurysms.

“Johnny?” Mark asks quietly.

Johnny blinks and shakes his head. “Yeah, sorry. Of course I’ll be there! I have a few errands to run but I’ll be at yours around four?”

He doesn’t miss the way Mark’s face falls a little at the realization it’s just a little over an hour until the dinner, but he doesn’t despair, instead shooting Johnny a sunny smile.

“Great!” He leans over the counter and frowns. “Why is Ten dying on your floor?”

Johnny flicks his wrist in the air. “He’s pretending he’s not bothered Taeyong is bringing Baekhyun to the dinner.”

“I’m not pretending!” Ten comes alive. “I _am_ bothered.”

Mark gives him a contemplative onceover and smacks his lips.

“Welp, I’m not getting into that,” he decrees. “Have fun!”

With that, he leaves quickly, the familiar rush of having a huge dinner to prepare and organize already shaking him up in the best way. Johnny sighs wistfully as he watches the door close after him. He really needs to do something about this stupid crush soon, because _fuck_ , watching Mark cook is their tradition, and after the disaster that was last Christmas, seeing Mark confined to his safe, protected element would do wonders to soothe Johnny. He misses Mark like stupid, and it’s been long overdue for him to fess up and decide what’s more important — saving their friendship or pining aimlessly for another year.

He suddenly remembers their trip to Montauk a few months ago. It was shortly after the second fall-out of Mark’s relationship with Jongin, and Mark was so depressed and consumed with whining about staying alone forever that Johnny couldn’t bear it and joked that worse comes to worst, _he_ dates Mark. It was a horrible slip-up that Johnny immediately regretted, but in the next second, Mark laughed it off — and it hurt so much that Johnny kept bugging him about it for the entire trip.

What a stupid thing to do. What an amazing man to love.

“You know,” Ten drawls from the floor, “I asked you if you were free this morning. You didn’t mention any errands.”

Johnny closes his eyes as he realizes his mistake. “Yeah? Something came up, then.”

“Mhm.” Ten falls quiet before the punchline. “It’s been a year of us _not_ talking about it, Jonathan.”

Johnny clicks his tongue and pulls out the big guns.

“Did you know Taeyong is taking Baekhyun to meet his parents next week?”

Ten groans loudly. Johnny smirks to himself. An eye for an eye, fucker.

/

As a lovely Christmas present for himself, Jaehyun gets two cats.

“Good evening,” he announces as he steps into the door, with a fluffy kitten in each hand. “Johnny, they live with us now.”

Johnny finishes his peppermint schnapps with the swiftness of a man walking the green mile and sets the glass hard on the kitchen table. 

“I don’t mind, thanks for asking.”

Jaehyun cackles and strolls further into Mark’s apartment, lowering the kittens on the couch and sitting down next to them with the most blissful expression on his face. Taeyong walks out of his room just in time to see one of them, a tiny little taby, turn over and fall on his face. He explodes in a series of endeared whines.

“ _Oh no, they’re the cute-e-est_!” He exclaims, falling on his knees next to the couch. “Oh, but Jae, Mark’s allergic.”

“I know, that’s why I won’t let them here from now on,” Jaehyun promises. “I just wanted to show them to you.”

Taeyong coos and scratches a black one on the tummy. The kitten meowls approvingly and plops on his back to give Taeyong better access.

“How are you gonna name them?” Ten asks from where he’s slouched on an armchair in a shrimp position. He’s watching the cats with polite interest, which can only mean one thing — once he’s alone with them, they’re getting _all_ the love he can give.

“Oh, I don’t know yet,” Jaehyun hums without much care in his voice. “I’ll come up with something.”

“Gods, can we take a vote?” Johnny pleads. “Your naming skills are horrendous.”

Jaehyun glares at him from the couch. “I know what you’re referring to, and I _still_ insist that Speedo is an amazing name for a roomba.”

“It’s the name of the underwe— No, you know what, we’re not having that discussion again!”

With an evil winning cackle, Jaehyun falls on the couch next to the kittens. Johnny hates him sometimes.

Just around then, Mark comes back from the bathroom to discover two felines in his living room _and_ two kittens attached to those. He stops in the bathroom door and blinks rapidly at the scene.

“What am I seeing?”

“Oh, shit, don’t come in here!” Johnny rushes to say. “Take some medicine, you’re allergic.”

Mark shakes his head and slaps his forehead. “Shit, I don’t have any. But why are there cats in my house?!”

“Jaehyun will explain,” Johnny betrays him simply. “I’ll go get you some pills, I think we have some from the kiwi incident.”

Ten shudders at the memory.

In his apartment, it’s quiet, and Johnny stops in the middle of the room, contemplating it. Back at Mark’s, it’s a cacophony of people and music and smells and noises — and it feels like _home_. It strikes Johnny in a sudden inspiration, that tricky little realization that it isn’t about the apartment, it’s about the people in it — the _person_ in it. Johnny rubs his eyes heavily.

“Fuck,” he whispers under his breath. “I’m fucked.”

“What’s wrong?”

He whips around to see a frowning Mark in the doorway, and only then realizes he didn’t close the door. He gulps and puts on a smile.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “Just remembered this project from work I forgot to finish.”

“Yo, that sucks.” Mark flinches. “Do you have to do it today?”

There it is, a perfect excuse cooked up accidentally but fitting perfectly into Johnny’s insane desire to stay away — but Mark looks so fundamentally _unhappy_ at even the mere thought that Johnny can’t do it. Not to him, not ever.

“Ah well, I’ll just have to make up an excuse and finish it after the holidays,” he says.

Mark lights up and nods happily. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah.” Johnny clears his throat. “Yeah, it is.”

He escapes into the bathroom before it can become more awkward — and _fuck_ , they never used to be awkward, what has he done? — in search of some preemptive strike medicine for Mark’s allergies. He fumbles through their medicine drawer and locates it before coming out into the living room, where Mark is yet standing like he hasn’t even moved an inch.

“I’m going to ask you something,” he blurts out, worrying his hands. “And I need you to answer honestly.”

Everything inside Johnny freezes instantly like a surface of a lake under the snow wave. He swallows and raises his eyebrows.

“Sure,” he says as calmly as he can manage. “What’s up?”

Mark bites his lip so hard it whitens, and it takes him a while to say something. The seconds stretch into infinity as Johnny stands there watching Mark bend his fingers forward and backward and thinks — what are you going to say? What do you know? Do you hate me for it? Could you see me as someone more? Can you forgive me for loving you?

“Have you been avoiding me?” Mark finally says, and Johnny’s stomach drops even further.

“What— what makes you say that?” He tries weakly, gauging the damage and if he can still get out of it.

“I don’t know, honestly,” Mark whines, rubbing his forehead. “But for some time now, _far longer_ than I’d like to admit, it’s felt like you never stay alone in a room with me. Have I done something wrong?”

“Oh, Mark,” Johnny breathes out. “Mark, _look at me_.”

Mark looks up so quickly it’s dizzying, his wide, shiny, hopeful eyes boring into Johnny’s. 

Johnny takes a step toward him, measuring his words as he looks straight into Mark’s eyes and tells him the only truth he’s been sure of as of late.

“You, Mark Lee, could never do _anything_ that would put me off,” he vows, “or even anything that could lessen this… huge fucking affection that I feel for you.”

With a little sniff, Mark smiles in a tiny stretch. “That’s nice.”

“So are you,” Johnny ensures him. “You’re my best friend, dude, and there’s nothing you’ve ever done wrong.”

“Alright,” Mark whispers, and then says a little stronger, “ _Alright_. That’s amazing. Love you, dude.”

Johnny’s throat constricts around the response. They’ve said that to each other so many times, but Johnny hasn’t been able to speak the words ever since they got a new meaning in the mess of his heart. Thankfully, he’s saved by an oven timer in the other apartment that beeps into life and summons Mark outside. Johnny breathes out in relief, closing his eyes.

His fingers constrict around something, and he looks down at the forgotten pills he’s supposed to stuff into Mark. Johnny rushes across the hall and completes his hero mission, and as Mark smiles at him gratefully before gulping the water to wash the medicine down, Johnny makes a vow to himself — no matter how hard it is, he’ll stop avoiding Mark.

Destiny works in freaky ways, but one thing is clear to him — he can’t lose this man. Not ever, not even if he has to burn the feelings out of himself. So, Johnny decides, even if his feelings can never be returned, he will forever stay by Mark’s side.

_**2019** _

“That’s so sad,” Irene draws uninspired. “When are you getting to the _happily ever after_?”

“Soon,” Johnny snorts. “But I have to do something first.”

He reaches over the cookies and the array of teabugs toward the company phone, taking the receiver off and dialing a number he could recite in his sleep. The call takes a second to connect and another few to be picked up.

 _“Lonely husbands residence, how may we help you?”_ Yuta’s voice comes from the speaker.

Johnny groans. “I’d like your loneliest, sexiest husband, please.”

“ _Doie’s busy, but I’ll put Mark through_ ,” Yuta snorts.

A scratchy fumble and a distant meowl later, Mark’s voice fills Johnny’s ears.

“ _Baby_?”

“Hey,” Johnny murmurs. “Merry Christmas Eve.”

“ _Ah, you too,_ ” Mark purrs. “ _Is everything okay? Aren’t you supposed to be working_?”

“I am,” Johnny says before looking down on the untouched pile of paperwork. “Well, I’m trying to.”

“ _Don’t you have minions_?” 

“I let them go home,” Johnny confesses. “It’s a holiday. It’s just me and Irene here.”

“ _Irene_?” Mark asks suspiciously. “ _Is that the gorgeous Irene from Sales?_ ”

“That is her, yes.” Johnny clears his throat. “Are you jealous?”

“ _Hm, no, you’re too embarrassingly in love with me to ever cheat,_ ” Mark says, to Johnny’s great embarrassment. “ _Also, she sounds gay_.”

“She is.”

" _Good for her. Did you get my note?”_

Johnny picks at the aforementioned piece of paper fondly. “Yes, thank you. I know I keep saying it, but you’re the best.”

“ _Mhm, it’s easy to take care of all of you. You’re almost functional adults_.”

With a hearty laugh, Johnny leans back in his chair. He listens to Mark’s quiet snicker and revels in the sound. 

“ _I miss that laugh_ ,” Mark confesses quietly. “ _I miss_ you.”

“Me too, baby,” Johnny whispers. “But I’ll see you in a week?”

“ _Yep, can’t wait!_ ” Mark says cheerily, but even his extensive acting skills can’t cover up his sadness. “ _I love you, but I kinda need to go. Jaehyun is eyeing the schnapps, and it’s just three in the afternoon. We need to last till midnight, at the least.”_

“Of course,” Johnny sighs. “You’re already cooking, aren’t you? I wish I could be there to watch.”

“ _You will be_ ,” Mark says so assuredly it sounds like he’s _threatening_ the Universe. “ _This time, you just have shit to do. Next year, you’ll be by my side. Just like always_.”

“Good manifesting, babe,” Johnny chuckles. “But you’re right. I will be.”

They hang up after a while, and Johnny stays silent as he refills his tea. Irene looks miserable, her face reflecting exactly how Johnny feels on the inside.

“You know,” Johnny murmurs. “He’s my soulmate. I knew that even before we fell in love.”

Irene sighs dreamily and leans in with her elbows propping her chin.

“Tell me about it,” she asks. “Tell me how it happened.”

Memories fill Johnny’s mind along with the steamy vapors of his mint tea. He stirs it slowly, watching the colorful lights drown in the water.

“Taeyong and Baekhyun’s relationship moved faster than any that I’ve ever seen,” he recalls. “Within eight months of dating, Baekhyun proposed.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Irene whistles. “That’s some magic dick on Taeyong.”

“It is, and I know that _despite_ my desire to _never_ know it. Ten _overshares_.” He sighs. “Anyway, the wedding was set to happen in London in September, so we all went out there. The whole thing deserves its own story, honestly, but what needs to be known is that, somehow, caught in the euphoria of love and with the help of copious amounts of alcohol… By the end of the rehearsal night, Mark ended up in my bed.”

Irene giggles happily. “Something tells me he wasn’t just crashing there.”

“No,” Johnny sighs happily. “We hooked up. Fuck, it was the happiest night of my life, but it was moving so quickly we were _freaking out_. We tried to cut it off at the root, and I was panicking even _more_ because I’d been in love with the dude for almost two years, but then, every time we tried to quit, we just… ended up together anyway. We always belonged together, but at the start, it was so new and _terrifying_ that we were keeping it secret from the others. And while it was hard on ordinary days, Christmas was an absolute torture…”

_**2015** _

Johnny always knew Mark was objectively attractive. He only realized it when he crashed at Yuta’s on Thanksgiving around the time Mark finished his second year of college, but from that point on, it was glaringly obvious that Mark would get enough hearts in his day.

His slender, neat, almost symmetrical form aside, there was his _face_. The big doe eyes you could get lost in for hours, the eyes that _shone_ with every slight emotion Mark was feeling at the moment. The variety of his smiles, all the ways they curled and twisted and played depending on his moods. The nose, oh, that adorable little nose that scrunched up in the same way when he was five and _twenty_ -five, a neat little thing that puffed up during cold weather and his sad moments. The constellations of moles on the left side of his neck and face that seemed to be made to trail kisses over. The jaw that went slack when he was amazed — which happened quite often, for the man had the gentlest soul Johnny’s ever encountered; and that stood out sharply when he was mad — a rare occurrence but terrifying nevertheless. 

That, and so much more — without even taking into account his absolutely brilliant _personality_ — made Mark quite a heart-snatcher, even when he was just an awkward young adult on the brinks of exploring his sexuality and fitting his rather naive personality into the cynical backdrop of the world.

So yes, Johnny always _knew_ , but only when he got access to all the beauty hiding behind Mark’s facade of a good boy, did he realize how gloriously _fucked_ he was for being in love with the man. As it turned out, Mark was not only nice to look at, Mark was also, however ridiculous it would’ve sounded to Johnny a few years ago, quite a teasing goddamn _slut_.

He arrives to Mark’s an hour before his allotted time, when he knows Mark won’t have started on the cooking yet, but it isn’t of lustful intent — he just wants to use the privacy of the apartment in Taeyong’s absence to show Mark some nice options for the secret getaway they were planning. So naturally, when he enters the apartment and looks around to spot Mark on the couch, he doesn’t expect to be crushed into the door as Mark jumps on him and kisses him so hard you’d think they haven’t seen each other in weeks. Which isn’t true, because Johnny literally sneaked out of Mark’s bedroom this morning — but Mark clearly doesn’t care. Johnny isn’t complaining, sure, but sometimes, Mark can be so incredibly _insatiable_ it’s hard to keep up.

“Taeyong is held up at Macy’s,” Mark breathes out into Johnny’s mouth. “And we have two hours until the others come around.”

“Don’t you have to cook?” Johnny tries, even if it’s hard to form coherent thoughts when Mark is biting into his neck, sucking on it with obscene moans drowning out Mariah Carey blasting around them.

“I only need to start in an hour,” Mark informs him with a snort. “I can do _a lot_ with you in an hour.”

A shudder goes through Johnny and straight to his nether regions, so he doesn’t waste time and carries Mark into the living room with an intent to get him into the bedroom and give him permission for all those things, of which, apparently, there are _a lot_.

But, as it always fucking goes when you’re having a secret affair with a man from an obessively codependent group of friends, everything goes to shit in the next three seconds. Just as Johnny reaches the couch, he hears loud steps in the hall, accompanied by Yuta’s annoyed voice.

On an instinct that he _hates_ to have developed, Johnny unstaples Mark from himself and throws him on the couch before jumping on it himself and throwing Mark’s grandmother’s quilt over his erection. It seems blasphemous somehow.

Mark turns on the TV just as Yuta and Doyoung enter the apartment, arguing about something Johnny has trouble figuring out, since he, oh right, is trying not to have a heart attack.

“Oh, hi, guys!” Mark says in a squeaky voice. “We’re just watching the—”

“I don’t think they care,” Johnny whispers.

Mark nods sharply and swallows. “What’s up?”

Yuta storms up to the couch. Johnny presses his legs closer together.

“Please, tell my dear _husband_ that it’s _not_ reasonable to expect me to want to spend _all_ winter holidays with his family,” he demands.

“We’ve been bailing on them for years!” Doyoung follows up, throwing his coat off aggressively and falling into the armchair. “And we visited your family just last month, meanwhile my mother says she can barely remember what you look like.”

Yuta outright hisses. “We were there last month, and your mother _hates_ me, so what’s your point?”

“She doesn’t hate you!” Doyoung argues with a growl that indicates it’s not the first time they’re having this argument. “She has _that face_ all the time!”

“No, she doesn’t!” Yuta screeches. “Mark, tell him!”

“Nah, I’m not getting involved in this,” Mark mumbles as he gets up from the couch. “I need to start cooking. _Someone_ has to be roasted in this house today, and it’s going to be the goose, clearly.”

Johnny almost chokes on air at the innuendo, but the hubbies don’t pay it any attention. As Mark departs with an inconspicuous wink, Yuta turns on Johnny.

“ _You,_ ” he breathes out. “Tell me, if you were dating, I don’t know, Mark, and—”

 _“What?”_ Johnny squawks. “I’m not dating Mark.”

“Of course you’re not,” Yuta says impatiently. “But say you _were_ , and every time you came over, our mom would look like she’s constipated even though you’ve known her for years and you _know_ she was a lovely lady to you before she found out you’re banging her son?”

“ _I’m not banging anybody’s son!_ ” Johnny hurries to screech out as he jumps off the couch and walks around it quickly. “And I’m not getting involved in your shit!”

He escapes the apartment without even caring about what it looks like and has to stop in his own and _breathe_. Jesus, that was… Weird. So fucking weird — and suddenly, so freaking _real_.

They’re keeping it secret for now, yes, but it won’t be like this forever. Jaehyun already knows as a result of a very ill-timed hookup session in the bathroom, but the others don’t, and eventually, if they want their relationship to go somewhere, they’ll _have_ to tell the others. Especially Yuta. Mark’s older brother. Johnny’s childhood best friend and college roommate and basically the man he calls his best friend when Ten isn’t listening.

Yeah, _that_ guy. And Johnny is banging his brother. 

Cat Number One runs up to him and yearns against his leg, asking for pets and kisses. Johnny sighs and picks her up to scratch behind her ears.

“This is gonna be a lovely fucking Chrsistmas dinner,” he murmurs.

Number One doesn’t provide him with much sympathy, but she does bump her forehead into Johnny’s chest, which is clearly the only support he’s getting tonight.

/

Mark says it’s too hot in the apartment and takes off his sweater. Johnny offers to lower the heat but Mark refuses and looks him dead in the eye as he slips out the atrocious woolen thing his mother sent him and stays in a thin white t-shirt. Johnny’s mouth goes dry, and Mark smirks. Johnny is about to pop a semi in a room full of people who don’t know they’ve been fucking on a regular and aren’t _supposed_ to find out yet, not if Johnny wants to spend Christmas escaping Yuta’s wrath around the block, and Mark’s _smirking_.

“I hate you,” he mouths at Mark, using the fact it’s only the two of them in the kitchen and the others are already opening gifts in the living room.

Mark winks at him and grabs another bottle of schnapps before sliding down to the floor. Johnny takes his place between Yuta and Jaehyun with a sigh. The latter is cooing over the set of books Taeyong got him, and the former is gazing up at his husband with stars in his eyes, their argument resolved or simply forgotten for the time being. Doyoung feeds Yuta grapes, and Johnny wants to whine.

“So, what are everybody’s plans for New Year’s?” Jaehyun asks, munching on a drumstick.

Taeyong sighs wistfully into his glass. “Wallow in misery, what about you?”

“Well, I was going to dress up as Santa and go hook up with some elves,” Jaehyun says, “but now I’m clearly spending it with you because I don’t want you to take a dive off of the Empire State Building.”

Ten snorts but quickly covers it up with a cough when everybody glares at him. He shrugs and buries himself even deeper into the armchair. Johnny feels a little bad for him, but the general consensus is that the dissolution of Baekhyun and Taeyong’s short marriage wasn’t entirely Taeyong’s fault. If _Ten_ hadn’t shown up at the wedding, perhaps, Taeyong wouldn’t have—

“I’m going to my parents,” Ten says after clearing his throat. “My sister is flying in with her new husband, so they want to rub my face in it.”

“Didn’t you just sell an entire collection of your art?” Mark frowns.

“Yeah, but…” Ten sighs and picks at the quilt wrapped around his lap. “Apparently, that’s just mildly interesting. They’d be much happier if I sold _myself_ into slavery.”

“For the last time,” Yuta sighs, “marriage isn’t slavery.”

“Yea-ah,” Taeyong sighs. “Marriage’s the best.”

“Really?” Ten arches an eyebrow. “How’s the hubby doing?”

Taeyong throws garlic bread at him in the following silence. Johnny doesn’t really get it, but those two seem to be wonderfully _okay_ with poking fun at each about the whole thing, and with each jab and joke, Johnny becomes more and more convinced something went down between them that nobody knows about.

“Let’s just not get into there,” Mark asks with a weird look on his face. “Marriage is nice for some, slavery for others. Just drop it.”

“Oh, _Markie_ ,” Yuta whines, reaching down to pat Mark’s head where he’s sitting on the floor before the table. “You’ll find the one. Just because Jongin didn’t work out, doesn’t mean—”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Mark stresses with a genuine smile. “Honestly, it is. I’m over him already.”

There’s a beat of silence before a series of _oh-oh’_ s break out over the living room. Johnny feels his stomach sink as Ten sits up and rubs his hands.

“ _That_ sounds like words of a man who’s happily banging,” Ten purrs. “Spill, Markie.”

Mark goes alarmingly red as Johnny pours himself more schnapps to have something to busy his mouth with lest he blurts out something he’ll regret. 

“Jesus, it’s nothing,” Mark murmurs. “Just someone... someone from work.”

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Taeyong gasps. “Do you really have a secret boyfriend?”

Everybody coos even more, and Johnny joins in belatedly as Mark sniffs and curls in on himself.

“Maybe,” he whispers almost inaudibly. “But I don’t wanna talk about it yet, okay? It’s relatively new, and you always get your noses into everything.”

“That is an _atrocious_ accusation!” Yuta exclaims.

“He’s right, though,” Doyoung points out.

“I know, but _still_.”

“Alright, everybody!” Jaehyun placates, holding his hands up. “Let’s just respect Mark’s privacy. He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”

Johnny squeezes his thigh quickly in gratitude as Mark nods enthusiastically.

“Okay, okay,” Yuta gives up. “But at least tell us if he’s treating you right?”

Ten looks over at Johnny at that second, and Johnny feels two things — shame and dread. Dread about Ten finally figuring it out and shame about never getting enough courage to tell Ten the truth, when he was the person who consoled Johnny every time over the last two years when Johnny stumbled into his apartment with alcohol and a plea to not ask questions.

But then, it passes, because he meets _Mark’s_ eyes.

“He does,” Mark says softly. “He’s the best for me.”

/

Mark sneaks into his room around two in the morning. Johnny stayed up waiting for him even though he was so well-fed and spent from the dinner he felt like passing out the second his head touched his pillow, and now, as Mark stumbles into his room and curls at his side on the bed, he admits that it was worth it.

“Tell me,” Johnny whispers, playing with the strings of Mark’s pajama bottoms. “Do you enjoy torturing me?

“Mhm,” Mark sighs dreamily. “A little. You’re very cute when you’re stressed.”

“You’re a fucking menace,” Johnny murmurs as he turns his face and meets Mark’s lips, already waiting for him.

It’s a chaste kiss, somehow surprising after the day of teasing and innuendos, and he knows it only takes a spark for them to blow up, but for now, he’s enjoying this. The softness, the mellow mood under the dim Christmas lights — white ones, because Johnny can’t sleep with colorful ones blinking in and out — and the domestic smell of Mark’s shampoo, ginger, and peppermint wrapping them in a blanket of warmth.

“Wait, did you take your Claritin?” He asks urgently. “Number Two’s been napping here all day.”

“Yeah, I did,” Mark breathes out with a little exasperation. “And I made an appointment, I’m starting my vaccination after the holidays.”

Johnny leans away and looks at him carefully. “Seriously? You hate needles.”

Mark shrugs, a little blush creeping up his cheeks. “Yeah, but I want to spend more time here, and getting some shots is much more convenient than loading up on Claritin.”

“Isn’t it…” Johnny swallows. “Isn’t that a vaccine you’ll have to take for three years before your body rewires?”

“Yeah.” Mark frowns. “What about it?”

Johnny doesn’t respond, can’t really find the words to — because… Because Mark is willing to go through something so hard just to be able to be with him without getting sick, and it would be a small thing if it wasn’t so… Huge.

His heart, the treacherous thing, decides now that it has been long enough, and in a beat of it, Johnny is overcome with a longing so achingly overwhelming he _has_ to say something.

“Mark,” he whispers, pulling away to see Mark’s face fully. “I—”

“No,” Mark interrupts softly, pressing his palm over Johnny’s mouth. “Me first.”

“Oh,” Johnny mumbles. “‘Kay.”

With a shaky sigh, Mark pulls away and sits up on his thighs, palms neatly laid out on them and his jaw set confidently.

“When I fell for you the first time, it was hard,” he starts, getting into it right off the bat. “It was my first crush, and you were so _far away_ from me. Yeah, we went to the same school, but we were only in one high school for a year, and you never saw me as anything but Yuta’s little brother, just that annoying nuisance that tagged along with you on secret late-night hangouts and that you only took with you so I wouldn’t rat you out to my parents.”

Johnny smiles fondly at the memory and wants to add his take on it, but Mark makes a zipping motion in the air. Johnny shuts up and listens.

“Then, you went away to college, and I got over it.” Mark swallows. “Not without difficulty, but I did eventually. Years passed, we all graduated, and all of a sudden, we were neighbors. You were my best friend, and I was kinda happy the crush went away, because it was so much easier to be with you as a friend without constant sweating and panicking over every single thing you said. 

“But then, something just… _happened_. Again. Once fucking again, I looked at you and couldn’t breathe, because I just _wanted_ you in a way that I couldn’t explain, but you were even more inaccessible than before, especially when you were working on that huge project and was barely ever home. Remember how I started waking up at six when I found out you were barely eating because of how busy you were? That’s when I realized I was done for, _again_. I wrote it off to just being lonely, and then I met Jongin, and the crush on you went away. I was so happy, because oh, it was so easy to love him, and it would be so hard to love you again.”

It’s really hard not to talk, but Johnny reins it all in — this is Mark’s time, and he needs to say his piece, and Johnny hangs onto every word, their essence acting as water to the well that has been dry for so long.

“And then, when I didn’t even know I needed you,” Mark recalls with an airy smile, “you were finally _there_. I was falling, and you caught me, and you held me until I was safe again, and you kept on holding me even when all the logic should’ve told you to let go. _I’m so happy you didn’t let go_ , Johnny. I just— Fuck, I—”

He rubs his face harshly, his breathing quickening. Johnny sits up closer and wraps his fingers around Mark’s wrists, pulling them away and meeting his teary eyes.

“I love you, Johnny,” Mark whispers. “I love you so fucking much it hurts sometimes, but it’s the best kind of pain, because you— You’re _you_. And I’m _me_. And somehow, it was always meant to happen.”

Mark closes his mouth sharply, having voiced everything he needed to, and Johnny _looks_ at him. He gets lost in Mark’s eyes but doesn’t let himself drift away completely, because there’s so much he needs to say, so much Mark doesn’t know — but perhaps, he can do it later. They have all the time in the world.

“I love you too, Mark,” Johnny says firmly, with a smile that threatens to split his face in half. “I love you.”

The breath that Mark releases sounds pained, but in the next moment, he’s climbing Johnny’s lap to pepper his face with aimless kisses. Johnny laughs under the onslaught of his affection but accepts it willingly, happily.

“Oh, I’m so happy you do,” Mark whines in a breath.

“Are you kidding me?” Johnny snorts as he catches Mark’s face between his face. “You’re _it_ for me, Mark Lee. There’s nobody but you. Ever.”

This is the only truth he needs to say for now. Later, he will tell Mark all about Vail and the pain of staying away when all he wanted was to scoop Mark up and get lost in him. Later, all that will happen _later_.

Now, Johnny simply kisses Mark, and then again, and again, and knows that for every waking moment for the rest of his life, he will always be _there_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god the taeten,,,,the johnmark beginnings,,,,i soo wanna cover them now but we have a theme going here, so we'll have to wait until i fess up with the other parts.
> 
> [DO COME YELL AT ME ON twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	4. Chapter 4

_**2016** _

Their first Christmas as an open couple is a happy occasion, the calmest one they’ve had in years. Nobody is fighting anybody or going through a breakup or divorce, and all of them are celebrating something aside from the birth of Christ. Taeyong just got a promotion to head his own department at Ralph Lauren, Ten finally bought his own gallery and is now freaking out about having _two_ businesses, Jaehyun booked his first indie movie that promises to be the _huge_ break after a series of _big_ ones that he’s been getting since becoming an actor, Mark became a head chef at one of the best restaurants in Manhattan, Yuta won an architectural grant to build his first ever skyscraper, and Doyoung… Well, nobody _really_ knows what exactly Doyoung does aside from the general definition of being a lawyer, but _that_ seems to be going splendidly anyway. 

And Johnny? Well, Johnny got promoted to Vice President of the company he entered a decade ago for a summer internship before his big break as a writer, and— Well. At least he has a kickass boyfriend.

“You look sad,” Mark comments from the kitchen.

Johnny blinks the daze of his life contemplation away and focuses on Mark by the stove. The traditional Mariah Carey blasts through the apartment, swims over the colorful decorations, and gets lost in the glittery coziness of the Christmas tree. Johnny sighs and hums.

“Just nostalgic, I guess,” he murmurs. “I had dreams and shit. Now I have a Christmas bonus that can cover our groceries for a year.”

Mark snorts and wobbles toward him with a huge bowl of cookie dough, stuffing a spoonful into Johnny’s mouth. Diligent and loyal, Johnny chews it and emits the much-deserved sound of pleasure.

“Your cooking is almost as good as your ass,” he comments.

With an eye roll, Mark hits him with a towel before going back into the kitchen.

“I know we haven’t really talked about it,” he starts, “but I just want you to know that if you decide to quit your job and become a struggling writer, I will support you through everything.”

On some level, on a very deep and soft level, Johnny already knew it — but actually hearing it voiced aloud gives it even more power. Johnny sighs dreamily.

“You’re the best,” he says for what must be a millionth time in all the years of them knowing each other. He’ll say it even more in the future, he knows it.

“Have to match you,” Mark says with a wink.

He bends to put the cookies in the oven, and Johnny takes no shame in ogling him. It’s nice not to have to hide it anymore, and when he thinks about what’s happening next year, he feels his heart go off even more.

Jaehyun, in all his flaring glory, enters the apartment with a song — and a baby.

“Oh my god,” Johnny breathes out, “did you steal a baby?”

“Of course,” Jaehyun says seriously. “I figured, why burden myself with finding a husband and having a family when I just can have a kid and be done with it, you know?”

Mark straightens out and measures him with a serious look. 

“The problem in knowing you is that I’m not sure you’re joking,” he says, going a little pale. “Are we aiding and abetting a kidnapping?”

Behind Jaehyun, two more people enter the apartment carrying an array of bags and pouches.

“No,” Kun breathes out as he heaves a bag of baby diapers on the floor. “You’re aiding and abetting _babysitting_.”

The apartment fills with laughter and conversation soon after as Kun takes his daughter back from Jaehyun and coos at her before handing her over to Johnny — who, despite being fairly good with people, isn’t sure how to behave with toddlers that can’t really be bribed with alcohol or sweets. Well, at least _for now_. Erica stares at him with her big doe eyes, eerily reminiscent of Mark’s, and then smiles with a half-toothless mouth. Hendery, Kun’s husband, relieves Johnny of his scary duty by taking Erica off his hands to settle her into the playpen he set up. Johnny’s a little grateful.

“So, do you need any help with dinner?” Kun asks, looking over the array of food on the table. “We brought some salads, but if you need—”

“No, no, I’m fine!” Mark says, a little hysterical. “You just, you just settle in, guys.”

Kun leaves the kitchen with a mildly spooked expression. Johnny hides his smile.

“It’s nothing personal,” he whispers. “Mark _always_ makes the Christmas dinner alone.”

“Oh, okay.” Kun swallows and throws a look over his shoulder. “It just feels weird. We’re imposing on your thing, and—”

“Nope,” Jaehyun interrupts, appearing by them out of thin air. “You’re not imposing, we _invited_ you, as the best agent in the whole wide world.”

Kun waves him off, to which Jaehyun goes into an even more passionate rant about all the virtues of Kun and his talent in finding the best roles and casting calls. Johnny leaves him to it and joins Mark in the kitchen, coming up to him from behind and carefully wrapping his arms around Mark’s waist.

“You good?” He murmurs into Mark’s ears.

“Yeah.” Mark turns around in his arms and feeds him a baby carrot. “It’s nice to have people here. I can’t imagine a quiet apartment. And well—” He throws a look at Jaehyun. “I feel a little guilty over stealing Jaehyun’s roommate.”

“Oh,” Johnny breathes out. “I’m just moving across the hall. And Taeyong will be there for him. I’m actually kinda excited, apart from, you know, the whole _living with my boyfriend_ thing.”

“Oh really?” Mark challenges. “ _I’m_ not the best thing about it?”

“You are,” Johnny assures, “but from now on, it’s going to be Taeyong’s responsibility to make pancakes for Jaehyun’s hookups before getting rid of them.”

Mark laughs as he bumps into Johnny’s chest. He breathes in deeply and relaxes a little by little.

The door opens once again to reveal Yuta and the others, who diligently gag at their public display of affection.

“Mark,” Ten calls out, “you have a VP on your face.”

“Mhm, he can stay there,” Mark responds, “so get fucked, Chittaphon.”

Jaehyun gasps scandalously from the living room as he covers Erica’s ears and sends Mark an angry look. Mark squeals in shame and buries his face in Johnny’s chest, his ears reddening.

“So,” Ten draws, standing over Erica’s playpen with a look that suggests an impending battle for dominance. “A child.”

Hendery clears his throat and leans over to Taeyong.

“Is he going to steal her?” He asks, dead serious. 

Johnny doesn’t blame him — the man is relatively new to the group. Kun has been hanging out with them more often lately since Jaehyun signed an exclusive contract with him, but Hendery has only been officially introduced this year, at Erica’s first birthday party. He’s an amazing dude, in Johnny’s humble opinion, and he doesn’t doubt that deep inside, he’s as crazy as the rest of them, but he’s still figuring them out before revealing his true colors.

“I don’t think so, he’s not a fan of the idea of being a father,” Taeyong responds, equally as serious. “But chances are, he _will_ try to paint her nails.”

Hendery pouts in thought for a moment before shrugging. “As long as it’s child-appropriate polish.”

Ten looks up at him sharply with his patented demon smirk. “I like you.” He turns to Jaehyun. “Can we keep him?”

“ _I_ will,” Kun deadpans. “You can look, but no touching.”

They start arguing in what Johnny hopes is a joking manner, while Yuta sits down next to Erica and sighs wistfully at her. Doyoung watches him from the couch, silently sipping on his drink. Somehow, Johnny can guess what conversation they will have soon.

It’s scary — to think about a baby in the group. Granted, it’s going to be the most adored and spoiled child ever, but yet, _a child_ changes things. He just hopes that they’re strong enough to include a little human and not fall apart.

Mark goes back to cooking, humming under his nose, and Johnny watches his face, realizing that, maybe not in the near future, but there will be a kid in the group. Maybe more than one or even two. As scary as it feels, he knows that when the time comes, he will be ready.

_**2019** _

“It took us some time,” Johnny recalls. “But we _did_ arrive at the realization that we’re ready to have kids.”

“Really?” Irene hums contemplatively. “I’m not anywhere near ready, but good for you.”

“Well, that’s why I’m still at a job I hate,” Johnny sighs. “Putting enough money into savings to get us started on the family.”

He gets up to stretch his limbs and walks over to the window, giving the city another look. The sky is darker now, and the entirety of the space under his feet is lit up with the gold and white of Christmas. It’s beautiful, but in Johnny’s mind, it’s just a substitute — a fake backdrop of the holiday that he’s not supposed to be spending here.

“But Yuta and Doyoung are expecting,” he says with a soft smile. “They just got a call a few weeks ago, there’s this pregnant girl in Ohio that chose them. They’re coming down after the holidays to meet her.”

“Oh, that’s so nice,” Irene exclaims with unfaked glee. “You’re gonna be an uncle.”

“Yep.” Johnny chuckles. “In just a few months, there’ll be a kid in our midst. It’s weird to think about.”

His mind goes out to New York, and he tries to envision what’s happening right now in the two apartments that he calls his home. They’re probably already opening presents around this time, gathered around a table breaking under the weight of Mark’s delicious food. The living room is full, even though there are two people missing.

“I’m not the only one missing Christmas, by the way,” Johnny speaks up with a sad sigh.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat and comes back to his seat, sinking down and making himself another cup of tea. “You’ve probably already gathered that Jaehyun has always been… promiscuous.”

“To say the least,” Irene comments darkly. “I’m pretty sure I saw him and his latest flings trending on Twitter on at least six separate occasions. But I thought he settled down? Or is that a publicity stunt?” 

“Well, is _that_ a fascinating story.” He snorts. “But let me start from the beginning.”

_**2017** _

The snowstorm that comes over the state on Christmas almost starts a tradition because, for the second time in a row, Kun and his family spend it with them. It’s almost duplicate to last year, only Erica is bigger now and can not only walk but _run_ , so the first half-hour of their stay at the apartment, Johnny is busy chasing after her all over the building to tire her out and lie her down for a nap.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Kun flinches when she’s finally down. “We were supposed to go out to my parents in Newark, but… Well.”

“ _Again_ , it’s absolutely fine,” Johnny assures him, still a little out of breath. “I needed some exercise, anyway.”

Kun’s phone rings, and he looks up at it before his eyes widen.

“I… _really_ need to take this,” he shoots out before climbing out onto the terrace.

Johnny shakes his head and turns to the kitchen, where Mark is already finishing up seasoning the goose. His engagement ring shines in the lights, and Johnny comes closer to take Mark’s hand and kiss his ring finger. Mark flinches but can’t keep off a wide smile that turns his face even more lovely.

“Gross,” he comments. “My hand was inside an animal.”

“Well, my hand was inside you last night, and you didn’t mind kissing it,” Johnny comments with a smirk.

Mark’s cheeks turn red alarmingly quickly, almost blending in with his horrible Christmas sweater sent by Johnny’s mom. It’s ugly, absolutely fucking _disgusting,_ but Mark still insists on wearing it to keep up the familial connection or some shit like that. 

He takes his hand back to wash it and stuff the goose into the oven before clapping his hands.

“Once this baby is done, we can stir the potatoes, and our first official Christmas dinner as a betrothed couple can start!” He exclaims a glee.

There’s been a particular spring to his step ever since Johnny proposed — or well, it wasn’t really— no, that’s another story. He looks so radiant you’d think he won a lottery, and Johnny revels in the fact that Mark thinks of a life with him as one. Unable to resist, Johnny scoops him up and kisses him silly, and just like always — that’s when the others choose to arrive.

“Seriously?” Ten whines. “ _Again_?”

“Traditions!” Mark yells at him. “Important.”

And yet, he presses his face into Johnny’s chest. Johnny sighs and kisses the top of his head.

Taeyong walks around them to get to the fridge and load up the peppermint schnapps. When he leans down to free up some space, his sweater rides down, and Johnny’s eyes zero in on what an amateur would consider a bruise. Johnny looks for Ten in the living room and squints at him, and yep, there it is, that self-assured smug look that Ten wears _only_ when he’s scored, and the grin that won’t leave his face shows Johnny exactly _who_ he scored with.

“You’ve _gotta_ be kidding me,” he seethes. “Taeyong, did you sleep with Ten?”

With a yelp, Taeyong shoots up and hits his head on an open cabinet. Mark hisses and disengages from Johnny to get some ice.

“Why do you think so?” Taeyong whines, rubbing his head.

Johnny _looks_ at him. Taeyong sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Alright, yes, but it doesn’t mean anything,” he says tiredly. “We have a deal.”

“You idiot,” Mark seethes, pressing a block of ice wrapped in a towel to his bump a little too harshly. “What kind of deal includes sleeping with your ex without it meaning anything?”

Taeyong looks between them and then attempts something that works only maybe around half the time — his puppy eyes. Johnny crosses his arms, and Mark mirrors it. Taeyong groans.

“Alright, but don’t tell him I told you,” he whispers. “A couple years ago, right before I met Baekhyun, we were both going through a dry spell and were feeling a little… neglected. One thing led to another, and we hooked up, but we really didn’t want it to turn into a thing, because, well, you know how it ended last time.”

All three of them flinch in unison.

“So naturally,” Mark says. “Like two sane, reasonable adults, you agreed it wouldn’t happen again.”

“Naturally,” Johnny parrots.

“Yea-ah,” Taeyong draws. “Not exactly? Uhm, we kinda made a deal that we _could_ sleep with each other if it’s at least four months since we _both_ had a relationship or just sex. We don’t make a habit out of it, and the timing doesn’t work out that often, so like. It’s not a thing.”

There’s silence between them in contrast to the rowdiness of the living room, where the others decided to play Twister to kill time before dinner. Taeyong swallows nervously.

“Say something,” he begs. “You’re like, my parents.”

“Ew.” Johnny flinches. “But okay. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

“Seconded,” Mark says. “This will only end with someone getting hurt, and look, you already bumped your head.”

“Listen,” Taeyong whines. “I’ve been lonely, alright? And Ten knows me, and he knows how to take care of me, and besides, he’s the best I’ve ever had, so why not take advantage of that, right?”

“Wait a minute,” Johnny gasps, squinting. “Ten hooked up with that dude in Vegas like in October. Which was two months ago, _which means_ you broke the rules.”

Taeyong purses his lips. “Yeah, about that...”

“You were the dude in Vegas, weren’t you?” Mark says grimly.

“It’s been a hard year!” Taeyong yelps before shoving the ice back in Mark’s hands and deserting into the living room.

Ten throws a worried look at him that, however small it is, tells Johnny they’ve been breaking their own rules quite often. He sighs and rubs his eyes.

“What are we gonna do with them?” He asks, so _exhausted_.

“We just have to let them leave the nest,” Mark says wisely. “But also, I’m keeping an eye on Taeyong, you’re on Ten. _Nobody_ is getting laid in this building aside from me tonight.”

“Oh, so I’m gonna get some?”

“Of course you are, sweetie.”

There’s a loud yelp, and they all turn toward the terrace to see Kun sprinting out of there with his phone clutched in his hand, a wide smile on his red-cheeked face.

“Guess what,” he says gleefully. “I just got a call from the _End to Start_ people.”

“Oh my god,” Jaehyun breathes out, his eyes wide as saucers.

He stands up and subsequently ruins the elaborate human centipede that’s been growing around him.

“ _End to Start_?” Taeyong frowns. “The Kim Jungwoo show?”

“Well, it’s more of a show _with_ Kim Jungwoo,” Mark speaks up, forgetting everything to talk about his favorite actor. “But you’re right, he _does_ steal the entire thing.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Kun confirms, “which is why they’re introducing a love interest for him in the second season. It’s a main role alongside the rest of the cast, and the actor who gets it gets booked for at least the entire season.”

“I auditioned for it last month,” Jaehyun says impatiently. “Well?”

Kun holds his silence for the sake of intrigue, but he’s never been good at concealing his emotions. He’s practically exploding with glee.

“You got it!” He finally yells. “You start shooting in March, but they need you on set by the end of January for fitting and walkthrough.”

A single second of amazed silence passes before the room erupts in cheers and laughter. Johnny worries absentmindedly that they’ll wake up Erica, but he can’t bother to care, not when his best friend has finally booked the job of his dreams, something he’s wanted even more than his own movie ever since he came to New York and had to practically live on the street as he put himself through acting school.

Jaehyun finds his eyes out of the cuddle puddle that forms around him. Johnny sprints toward him and snatches him up to envelop him in the warmest and tightest of hugs, cupping Jaehyun’s neck against his shoulder.

“You deserve it, dude,” he whispers. “You really fucking do.”

Jaehyun leans away to look at him, his eyes welling up. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Johnny chuckles in disbelief. “You made it happen yourself.”

“I wouldn’t have done without you,” Jaehyun insists. “All those years of rehearsals and photoshoots and holding my hand through shit? Thank you, Johnny. _Thank you._ ”

Johnny feels something tight coil in his chest at this, but he simply nods his head and plants a wet kiss on Jaehyun’s cheek before hugging him again.

“A show alongside Kim Jungwoo,” Mark whistles from behind. “You’re in the big league now, buddie.”

“Yeah, wow,” Jaehyun breathes out. “I hope he’s a nice dude.”

“Oh,” Hendery speaks up. “I choreographed a dance routine for him last year. He’s decent, but can be a little closed off.”

Jaehyun hums and shrugs. “I can deal with that. Mark my words, we’ll be besties in no time.”

With a swelling pride inside, Johnny squeezes him tighter. It’s amazing to see Jaehyun so happy, and he thinks to himself that Kim Jungwoo would be insanely lucky to have a friend like Jaehyun.

Two months later, when Jaehyun will storm in and announce that he has gained a mortal enemy, Johnny will reconsider it, but that, of course, is a story for another day.

_**2019** _

“God, that year was something out of a sitcom,” Johnny recalls. “Tabloids won’t tell you this, but _I_ might one day. The Great Jaehyun and Jungwoo Conundrum is probably my favorite story after that time Mark and Taeyong lost a bet to us and we swapped apartments.”

“That seems like a short story,” Irene wagers.

“Yes, but you don’t know how they got it _back_ ,” Johnny points out. 

Despite the joy of reminiscing, he feels bitter every time he remembers _why_ he’s even telling these stories. He sighs and picks up Mark’s note, pinching it between his fingers and for what must be the twentieth time today tracing the lines of Mark’s handwriting. He can imagine him writing it — bent over the note, his tongue peeking out a little as he plots his little care-package. Fuck, it must’ve been next to impossible to send his own cooking all the way to Tulsa and arrange for it to be delivered to Johnny’s hotel room.

“I literally have the best husband in the world,” Johnny breathes out. “I’m an idiot.”

“Nah, you’re not,” Irene assures him with a tired smile. “It’s not your first Christmas as a married couple, is it?”

“No, thank gods,” Johnny snorts. “It was last year. Kun and Hendery couldn’t join us, but someone else certainly did…”

_**2018** _

Johnny leans on the kitchen counter next to Mark busying himself with a salad and takes a contemplating sip of his drink, observing the scene in the living room.

“Were we as clingy?” He asks, squinting. “And like, like _that_?”

Mark turns around to see what he means and snorts after a moment.

“We’re still _like that_ ,” he informs Johnny. “But we’ve moved past being _like that_ everywhere we went with no regard to who’s watching. I think marriage put some decency in us.”

“Really?” Johnny arches an eyebrow. “You felt me up just last week in your mother’s bathroom.”

With a definitely deliberate eye-contact, Mark licks tomato juice from his finger with a _pop_.

“It wasn’t in front of everybody, so what’s your point?” He asks. “I said we got more decency, I didn’t say you got less hot.”

Johnny giggles — but he’ll never admit it, of course. Mark leaves his place to pull more products from the fridge, and Johnny returns to observing two freshly-monogamous homosexuals in the wild currently doing _things_ on his couch. He just hopes they get some common sense before someone’s pants come off.

With his signature perfect timing, Ten throws open the door to the apartment.

“Yo-ho- _horny!_ ” He screeches, taking in the lovey-doveys on the couch.

Jaehyun sighs and takes a moment _not_ ogling his boyfriend — gods, Jaehyun having _a boyfriend_ , someone must alert the church elders — to glare at Ten.

“Jealous much?” He asks.

“I got laid last night,” Ten informs him sweetly as he carries a huge box of fruit inside.

Mark turns in a jerk to meet Johnny’s eyes as they do the counting simultaneously. 

“ _Four months_ ,” Mark mouths with a terrified look.

Well. At least they kept to the rules this time.

Unaware of their excellent detective skills, Ten proceeds into the living room to engage Jaehyun’s boyfriend in a conversation that carries no sense aside from distracting him from exchanging saliva with Jaehyun.

“Alright, but listen,” Mark whispers. “Out of all people Jaehyun groped on my couch, this one is my favorite.”

Johnny sighs and looks at him judgmentally. “You would tie Jaehyun naked to the Christmas tree if it meant you could have Kim Jungwoo in your living room.”

Mark doesn’t deny it, only pursing his lips innocently as he leans to look inside the oven. Johnny locates his favorite sight and smirks.

“ _There_ it is,” he sing-songs.

With a laugh, Mark pinches his thigh, but doesn’t make a move to straighten up. Johnny trails the edge of his body with his eyes, not just _ogling_ it but enjoying the sight of it — the knowledge that this is _his_ man. His freaking husband, no less. 

Jaehyun says something that has Jungwoo laughing so loudly the water pours out of his nose. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, Jaehyun could swear on his grave he would hate this man until the earth became his eternal home. Johnny can still see it all unraveling before him — the events of the past year that led Jaehyun to sitting by Jungwoo’s side and watching his profile with all of his dimples on display and with the eyes of a man who finally found his light after years of darkness. It’s nice. Johnny’s happy for him.

Johnny’s happy for all of them, even Ten and Taeyong who still can’t figure out they’re going to end up together one way or another. The game is what they need, and the game is what they will have until something happens that finally makes them change the board and realize they’ve been fighting on the same side all along.

Mark sneaks under his arm and presses to his side, releasing that small sigh of his that appears when he’s happy and relaxed. The door opens to invite Doyoung, Yuta, and Taeyong in — and now they’re all here. The family. His family.

_**2019** _

“And now, I’m stuck here,” Johnny murmurs wistfully. “Jungwoo’s stuck in Tokyo this year, too, and—”

His phone rings with a notification. He picks it up to see a message from Jaehyun, and when he opens it, his mouth goes dry.

“Or, well,” he draws. “Jungwoo got an early flight out and surprised Jaehyun for Christmas.”

He turns the phone to show Irene the selfie Jaehyun sent him — half the gang is in it clearly, and another half is there partially. Irene takes the phone with a nearsighted squint and zooms in on something. Her face goes cold for a moment before she puts the phone carefully on the table and turns it to him.

“I don’t want it to look like I’m poaching for something here, boss,” she starts carefully. “But I think… I think you know what you have to do.”

Johnny frowns before he looks down on the phone. _Oh_.

Mark is there too, but he’s not looking at the camera. He’s looking at his own phone, lit up but not unlocked — and Johnny knows what picture is there, what picture _has_ been there for years. 

Their first date.

“You spent the last five hours,” Irene says, “telling me an amazing story of a family. Of people least _likely_ to become one, and I’m telling you, I have never been this entertained. If you can make mundane events of life sound so interesting, imagine what you can do when you let your imagination fly.”

Johnny meets her eyes, his heart beating wildly.

“What are you saying?”

Irene smirks mysteriously and drags the papers they abandoned closer to her.

“I think you know exactly what I’m saying,” she says softly before looking down on the reports. 

A still moment of wonder settles over Johnny’s mind, and suddenly, all of it flashes before his eyes in a supercut — all those Christmases, and not just them but every moment of his life since he moved to New York. Since he met Jaehyun, since he first saw Taeyong run into that coffee house, since he became unlikely friends with Ten, since he fell in love with Mark — all of that and every moment in between.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and smiles. “Yeah, I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the jaewoo,,,oh the jaewoo,, i literally came up with their story last night but if anything happens to them i will-- you know the gist. hope you enjoyed this!!
> 
> [DO COME YELL AT ME ON twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	5. Chapter 5

Mark leans back on the couch, his belly full but his heart somewhat empty, and takes a look around the living room. It looks, quite simply, beautiful. Picture-perfect Christmas Wonderland. He can honestly admit he’s outdone himself this year, but that comes on the waves of a bitter truth — he only did it to take his mind off of the fact that one less person will be enjoying his effort. 

The Christmas tree stands tall in front of the big window, shining and glistening with rainbow lights and little toys, everything perfectly aligned and decorated. The lights and fuzzy garlands are strung all through the apartment, covering everything he could get his hands on and sneaking into every little corner of their house. Even the bathroom towels and soaps are Christmas-themed. Not for the first time tonight, Mark regrets doing it all himself. Back when he did it, he still didn’t know Johnny would be working on Christmas. If he’d known, he would accept his offer to help. He would look now at the little angels drawn on the windows and smile to himself remembering how Johnny got the paint all over himself. But Johnny didn’t. Because Johnny didn’t help, and Johnny isn’t here.

Jaehyun slides down next to him and bumps his shoulder with his nose.

“Hey,” he whispers.

Mark turns to look at him and puts on a diligent smile, even though it’s pointless in a room full of people who’ve known him for so long. He sniffs.

“I just wish he was here,” he whispers. “I’m happy Jungwoo could make it.”

With a slurred smile, Jaehyun looks over to the floor before the TV where Jungwoo gushes at the ultrasound picture that Vanessa, the mother of the baby, sent Doyoung and Yuta last week. Mark’s seen it too, almost tearing up and turning to his left to draw Johnny’s attention to something before remembering — Johnny wasn’t there.

“It just doesn’t feel right without him,” he murmurs. “Everything is perfect and in place, but I just _feel_ his absence.”

Taeyong sneaks up from his other side and wraps his arms around Mark’s shoulders.

“We all miss him,” he assures. “Do you want to call him?”

Mark glances at the clock. It’s almost midnight, and Johnny’s either still at the office or already asleep. It pricks a little that he didn’t call, but then again, he probably guessed everybody was too wrapped up in the festivities to be able to talk. How considerate of him. Mark wonders if Johnny realizes he hasn’t let the phones out of his sight since the last time they talked at three.

“Nah,” he murmurs. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

Under the tree, the pile of gifts stands tall in a tower that has only grown since Jungwoo arrived and added his own series of neatly wrapped packages. Usually, they’re too impatient to wait until the appropriate time and open them around ten in the evening, but this year, it has been unanimously decided that they’ll wait for Johnny, even if they have to side-eye the gifts for a week.

Jungwoo gives the ultrasound picture to Ten, and Mark notices something strange about the way Ten is holding it — there’s a frown etched into his forehead as his fingers shake with a barely visible strain. Taeyong hums and disengages from Mark to go sit down next to Ten and whisper something to him. Ten looks up and watches Taeyong for a long time before saying something short but poignant. Over the music, laughter, and chatter, Mark can’t hear what it is, but Taeyong’s eyes widen as he goes pale at an alarmingly fast pace.

Something isn’t right. Mark reaches for the iPod plugged in next to him on the table and lowers the volume.

“What’s wrong?” He demands, staring at Ten.

He doesn’t care that he’s imposing, probably, because he just detected a new potential crisis to solve, and even after a series of successfully completed missions today, Mark still admits he needs another win.

Ten looks up at him like a slightly tipsy deer in the colorful headlights. He swallows and looks around the room, realizing that everybody’s staring at him now.

“What do you mean?” He asks shakily.

“Taeyong looks like he’s about to scream,” Mark says, pointing to the man in question, who’s sitting frozen and spaced out. “What did you just say to him?”

“It’s…” Ten clears his throat. “It’s private.”

Normally, that would be enough for Mark to drop it. He can be nosy when it comes to his friends, sure, but he’s also not an intrusive asshole, and he would respect Ten’s decision to keep his secrets if it wasn’t for one thing.

For the past three weeks, Ten has not been himself. 

It all started when he disappeared once again without telling anybody anything, and while usually, they’re at least able to figure out what happened to make him bounce — more often than not, it’s connected to Taeyong, who usually fills them in — this time, there was nothing. No fights, breakups, traumatic events, triggers — nothing. One evening, they were all hanging out and making plans to go see a play on Saturday, and the next morning, Ten just up and left. He at least had the courtesy to send a text that he’s alive — something Mark _demanded_ he would start doing after his third or so mysterious disappearance — but other than that, _nothing_.

He came back two weeks after, and that’s when the changes started happening. He became more quiet and contemplative, often spacing out of conversations and not recalling them when asked. Plans were canceled, calls went unanswered, questions kept hanging. Ten was brewing over something, that one was obvious, but what exactly happened, nobody could figure out, not even Taeyong who’s usually the only one able to get under his skin, even when Johnny fails.

So when Ten finally says something to anyone, something that clearly has shaken him to the core and makes him look like a man who found out he had a terminal illness — Mark has to know. Especially because that’s _exactly_ what he keeps turning over and over in his head every night — that Ten is about to fucking die or something but he’s choosing to spare them the pain.

“Ten,” Mark says, as gently as he can. “If you can look me in the eye and tell me it’s really _nothing_ , just some new thing that came into your head, I’ll drop it, I promise. But if it’s something that keeps eating at you like it’s been lately, I need to know. We all do.”

“Maybe you should keep your nose out of things for once,” Ten snaps suddenly.

Mark’s heart drops. He knows that Ten has always been sarcastic and mean to an extent, but not once in all the years of them knowing each other did he stoop so low.

“Ten,” Doyoung, out of all people, warns. “Don’t.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Ten seethes, turning his head. “You know I can’t say anything yet.”

“Alright, what the hell?” Mark sits up. “ _Doyoung_ knows, but I don’t? Does Johnny?”

“No, he would spill everything to you immediately,” Ten snorts. “I learned my mistake when Doyoung told Yuta everything. Married people aren’t to be trusted.”

With an indignant squeak, Mark throws his hands up in the air. “What the fuck?”

Yuta sips on his cocktail a little too enthusiastically. Taeyong, meanwhile, snaps out of his daze.

“So if you got Doyoung involved,” he breathes out, drilling a hole in Ten with his intense stare, “you’re not joking?”

“No,” Ten says a little sadly. “You know I would never joke about something like that.”

“Alright,” Jungwoo speaks up, slapping his thighs. “I know I’m relatively new to the group compared to your track records, but uhm, _what the hell is happening_?”

Ten opens his mouth, but nobody gets to hear the truth — not for now, at least — because in the complete silence of the tense conversation, the door opens.

Mark doesn’t turn around at first, because the door opening when Johnny isn’t by his side can mean one thing — Johnny’s come home, and that’s not unusual — but then he realizes Johnny _can’t_ be coming home because he’s miles away and wouldn’t be coming through that door for another week.

Which is why when Johnny speaks up, Mark almost spills his schnapps all over his jeans.

“You all look tense,” Johnny comments from the door. “I gather Christmas isn’t the same without me?”

In a moment that seems to both stretch forever and pass in a blink of an eye, Mark turns around to see his husband standing in the door with a suitcase and a smile.

“What?” Mark whispers. “Do I miss him enough to hallucinate or is he really here?”

Johnny laughs — _ah_ , that glorious, alive, _close_ sound that Mark dreams about every time its owner isn’t sleeping next to him. 

“Nope, I’m here.”

His entire body on fire, Mark shoots up from the couch and runs toward him, jumping on him with no regards for his weight or Johnny’s tiredness — Johnny always catches him, _always_ , and that is exactly what happens now. Johnny’s hands hold him tight by his waist as Mark buries his face in his hair, cupping his head to press him even closer.

Johnny rubs his back, and Mark jumps down but not an inch away, looking up into Johnny’s happy eyes, the honey of warmth that always guided Mark through the hardest times.

“What are you doing here?” He murmurs, feeling like he can cry or laugh, or perhaps both. 

“I wanted to be with you,” Johnny says simply, like it’s the most obvious truth in the world. “I missed you so fucking much I retold Irene our entire Christmas history.”

A laugh breaks out of Mark in a bubble. “Even the ski accident?”

“ _Especially_ the ski accident,” Johnny exclaims scandalously. “That was the day I realized I don’t ever want to be parted from you.”

Nobody else matters as Mark takes his face in, every little line and curl of his smile. He’s here. He’s really here.

“Won’t they fire you?” He asks with a frown, even if he can’t really be bothered to care that much. 

“Turns out, they can’t fire me,” Johnny informs him with that superior smirk of his that only turns Mark on just _a little_. “Because I quit.”

Mark blinks in surprise, shaking his head. “What?”

Johnny takes his hands and kisses his engagement ring. 

“I know I should’ve talked to you about it,” he says urgently, “but I just couldn’t stay there anymore, not when it kept me away from you _and_ it isn’t even what I want to do with my life.”

“No, no,” Mark hurries to reassure him. “I told you so many times, baby, if that’s what you need to do, I’ll support you. Through everything.”

“That’s… amazing.” Johnny kisses his nose lightly. “By the way, I have _no idea_ what I want to do.”

Mark laughs and rubs his neck. “We’ll figure it out.”

Johnny kisses him, for real this time, and Mark sinks into it, into _him_ , his amazing, perfect, gorgeous husband. He knows it will be hard for a while, but they will get through it like they always do — together.

And, of course, with copious involvement from their friends, who have apparently decided that’s enough marital time. Jaehyun clears his throat behind them.

“Can _we_ kiss him now?” He asks with a smirk that Mark can _hear_.

“Hugs are good,” Mark says, stepping away but still not letting go of Johnny’s hand, “but you get those lips anywhere near his face and I’ll shove my foot so far up your ass I’ll be able to count your teeth with my toes.”

“Kinky,” Jaehyun comments, but when he hugs Johnny, he keeps his face closer to his shoulder. Mark cackles.

It takes them almost ten minutes to get all their hugs and congratulations out of the way, and Mark uses that time to quickly whip Johnny up a plate of the food he blissfully didn’t wrap yet. He works on it merrily with the biggest smile on his face, unable to stop jumping up and down around the kitchen counters, almost laughing from the pure unabashed glee exploding within him.

“Hey,” Ten calls out quietly, coming up to him from the side. “I’m sorry about before.”

Mark stops in the middle of arranging the veggies on the table to meet his eyes.

“It’s fine,” he breathes out. “I mean, it’s not, but I know you. I can’t imagine how distressed you have to be to come for _me_ of all people.”

“A little full of yourself, aren’t you?” Ten asks with a little smile.

“My husband pampers me so much I haven’t felt self-conscious in years,” Mark informs him smugly.

It’s true. Even when they were just friends, Johnny made it his goal to squish every insecurity of Mark’s if he happened to encounter it. Ever since they got together, that only intensified, and _fuck_ , Mark is so lucky to have the biggest cheerleader on his team, even if Johnny believes it to be his purpose on Earth to use jokes and irony as his weapons of choice.

“But also,” Mark sighs, “you have to tell us what’s going on. We will help, if you need it.”

Ten watches his face for some time, worrying his lip, before nodding with a tortured sigh.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Just give me a little time to phrase it.”

“Just say it how it is,” Mark advises. “You know we’ll always understand.”

The plate is finished, so he grabs some cutlery and a towel and carries it all to the living room. He sets the food before Johnny and snuggles up to him on the couch, attaching himself to Johnny’s hand and resolving to not leave it for at least a few hours. Johnny smiles down at him and leaves a loving kiss on his forehead.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to try what you had left for me in Tulsa,” he whispers. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Mark promises. “The cockroaches at that hotel can have all of it if it means you’re here with me.”

Johnny laughs heartily before digging in. Mark watches his happy profile, listening for every sound and chuckle that comes as the others fill him in on what happened while he was gone, and he thinks back to all the Christmases they’ve had together — and all the things that happened in-between. Loving Johnny was something he always did, something that sometimes was _the only_ thing he knew how to do, and look at him now — it led him right to this moment, in this living room, surrounded by their friends and looking forward to a future that may be a little uncertain but will still be _theirs_.

Ten stands up in the middle of the room and clears his throat.

“I have a little announcement,” he starts, as serious as Mark has _ever_ seen him.

With a pause, Ten takes a careful look around the room, halting on each of their faces before his eyes stop on Taeyong. Whatever he finds there seems to breathe new life into him, as he breathes in a big gulp of air and blurts it out.

“I’m going to be a father.”

Mark freezes. Mariah Carey hums through the room in the absolute silence. 

Well. Perhaps, their future is going to be _very_ uncertain. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOHOHO YALL MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
> 
> i know this is quite a cliffhanger, but we'll be getting to it lmao. for now, johnny is home, and the Christmas spirit is all around us~~  
> thank you all for your support for this little thing. if you want to see more adventure of this mismatched squad, you can subscribe to the series. thank you all, and have amazing holidays!
> 
> [DO COME YELL AT ME ON twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


End file.
